After Seven Keys
by scentedglitter
Summary: Oneshots and other bits and pieces from the Seven Keys universe. Now with added Bechloe Week 2018.
1. Chapter 1: California

**A/N:** **Directly follows on from the end of Seven Keys. Fluff before Chloe returns to Australia.**

* * *

Chloe hadn't stopped talking to people on New Years Day, after Seven Keys' last song was released. Beca had reluctantly headed for the airport, getting her driver to drop Chloe off at her hotel because _it was on the way anyway, dammit_. That extra ten minutes mattered, even though they were seeing each other again in less than 48 hours.

Chloe had shut off her phone not long after Aubrey called, wanting to leave responding to all the messages from people who had figured out what was going on until she was by herself again. Now, sitting in her hotel room, she was still kind of putting it off. She hadn't listened to the song again herself since last night. Part of her wanted to analyse every line, part of her wanted to just forget about it for a while and go out and explore New York a bit more, but she was too tired for the latter.

She had about thirty messages when she turned on her phone again, but she went to Beca's first.

" _It's literally playing on the radio already oh god that usually means it's gonna be big_ " the first message reads, followed by three shocked emojis.

" _I know you've probably still got your phone off but I feel like I need to tell you whenever I hear it, it's on in the airport now, no one's recognised me though thank god"_

Beca probably isn't in the air yet, so Chloe replies, telling her about the number of texts and messages she has to respond to. Beca's reply is quick – " _get to it, then, don't want your friends to hate me!_ " – and reluctantly, she follows her advice.

Somehow, she finds herself on Skype with a few of her friends in Toronto a few minutes later who were apparently together today and had to have this conversation at least slightly face-to-face, evidently. They scream when she answers, and Chloe laughs, letting herself get swept up in their excitement. Maybe she wasn't quite as close to them as her long-term friends back in Australia (who, thankfully, had mostly not woken up yet), but these girls had all had to deal with her pining over Beca for the last couple of months and to say they were happy with what Chloe told them was an understatement.

Around the same time the Australians started waking up, Chloe got an update from Beca, now holed up at her Mum's place in California because apparently she'd missed out on a family new years' event and had to make up for it today.

" _So it's in the itunes top 10, which isn't like officially charting, but probably means it will… Sorry?_ " Beca's text reads, followed by more shocked emojis. Beca was certainly getting a lot of use out of that one.

" _Not gonna lie, I was just stalking the hashtag on Twitter, I think the going theory right now is that you used Chloe as a codename for someone else_ "

" _Awesome, my trick of being TOO obvious worked!_ "

" _Sure you meant to do that x"_

" _Well clearly I'm smart, I got into USYD…"_

 _"Did you stalk my Facebook to work out that's what we call it?"_

 _"Maybe…"_

* * *

'Chloe' is sitting at a comfortable number 7 in the official singles chart by the time Chloe is flying out of New York two days later. Dylan and Chris – who Chloe has, strangely enough given technically Seven Keys is now officially broken up, started talking to a significant amount – have made the joke about seven keys being at seven more times than anyone else thinks necessary. Definitely more than seven.

Leaving New York was weird for Chloe. Sure, she was just going to California, but she'd been on the east coast of North America for over 4 months now and it'd been kind of life-changing, even outside of everything with Beca. She'd got to meet a whole new group of people and explore another part of the world, and she'd nerded out with a bunch of other anthropology students and even some published academics whose work she'd read in the past and, yeah, she totally wanted to do an honours year now because she had _such_ a good idea for a thesis. She was definitely getting ahead of herself, she still had a full year of undergraduate, but _still_.

She managed to make peace with the concept of leaving before she was on the plane, at least, partially because she'd got yet another Skype call from a few Toronto friends a couple of hours ago demanding they stay in contact, as if that definitely wasn't going to happen anyway. Chloe wasn't the type that fell out of touch with people, she liked to keep friendships, and the assurance that her friends felt the same way this time was comforting.

It also helped, just a tiny bit, that she'd decided she'd stay at Beca's place in California. The hotel she'd booked was fully refundable, and it wasn't exactly ideal location-wise either because she'd booked too late, and it's not like she wasn't going to spend the whole time with Beca anyway, so why not stay in her apartment?

The only development that had occurred in the public awareness of who this mysterious Chloe was in the last two days had been fans who'd got autographs on New Years Eve giving rough descriptions of the girl that Beca was with that night, but none of them had photos, and the only detail they'd really got was red hair. They hadn't even heard her talk, so no one had any reason to think Beca and Chloe were both going to disappear off to Australia soon.

So, when she arrived at LAX, Chloe pulled her hoodie up over her hair and put on a pair of sunglasses, on Beca's advice, as she walked into the arrivals hall and quickly found Beca.

"I feel some weird combination of cool and silly doing this whole disguise thing," Chloe mumbles as Beca takes her hand and leads her out to the short-term carpark.

"You'd think I'd be used to it by now, but nope, still feel silly," Beca agrees. It works, though – no one recognises Beca, and no one seems to notice Chloe.

Beca's apartment is modest, although not tiny, and kind of what Chloe had expected. There's an open plan kitchen-living-dining with largely bare furniture and a bookcase absolutely full of music – CD and vinyl, of course – and the small office is packed full of music equipment that Chloe doesn't quite know the exact function of. Beca's bedroom has a fair spattering of her personality evident, too – the room is bright, but her bed coverings are dark, and instead of jewellery or makeup the dresser is lined with sunglasses and three pairs of headphones. They're all different, Beca assures her, and Chloe is inclined to believe her. She likes decent sound quality too, it's just that the $20 non-branded earphones she uses were, well, twenty dollars. Maybe she should upgrade.

Chloe puts her suitcase against the wall in Beca's room at the brunette's suggestion, before following her back out into the main room, sensing her girlfriend is struggling to fight off some awkwardness.

"What's up?" Chloe asks, turning to her side to face Beca as the both sit down on the sofa.

"I don't know. Sudden onset awkwardness," Beca replies, shaking her head before turning and meeting Chloe's eyes.

"That's okay. Be as awkward as you want. Did Ashley tell you when she's free?" Chloe replies, and Beca can't help but smile at how easily her girlfriend makes her feel more normal.

"Tonight or tomorrow, she actually suggested grabbing takeaway from a Mexican place near here and meeting us for, in her words, a cute picnic thing somewhere?" Beca replies, jokingly scrunching up her nose at the description.

"You totally love the idea, don't be silly. Where would this somewhere be?" Chloe answers, and Beca shakes her head, knowing Chloe can see right through her.

"There's a really nice spot up the top of one of the mountain trails near here that I go up sometimes when I'm not being lazy, it's got a decent view over the city and stuff, you mentioned you wanted to do one of those?" Beca explains, and Chloe nods.

* * *

The awkwardness of the first five minutes of Chloe's stay with Beca disappears quickly and doesn't return. They meet Ashleigh that night, and Chloe is initially surprised at how soft-spoken and soft-mannered Ashleigh is compared to Beca, until she realises it kind of makes sense. Beca might be defensive, but she's not the slightest bit out-there, and the two girls admit that they don't actually physically spend much time together given the "best friends" label because they're both kind of introverts. Chloe finds conversation with Ashleigh easy, anyway, and they have a nice evening.

"Thank god that went well," Beca sighs in relief, later that night, falling back on her bed as Chloe changes into pyjamas on the other side of the room.

"Were you worried it wouldn't?" Chloe asks, intrigued.

"Not really. You and Ashleigh both seem like you could get on with anyone. It's just… important that you two did. You did, right?" Beca quickly sits up and looks at Chloe, her eyes cautious.

"Of course, she was fun. I love how passionate she is about her job, too, although it still amazes me that your best friend is a kindergarten teacher…"

"Oh, shush, I'm not that grumpy."

"Were you not the one that tried to convince me you're totally less sweet than you really are?" Chloe teases.

"Of course not," Beca answers, sarcastically, shifting back onto the bed again as Chloe joins her. That night, for the first time, they share a bed but don't sleep together. They do cuddle, though, and Beca doesn't pretend she hates it, because honestly, she doesn't. Maybe it wasn't ever that she didn't like physical affection, maybe it was just she was getting it from the wrong people.

Chloe's second day in California is, well, relaxing as _shit_. Somehow, she convinces Beca to spend the morning shopping with her in Santa Monica, and it's kind of busy and tourist-y but it's nice and, given it's technically the middle of winter and snowing on the other side of the country, surprisingly warm. The beach is even busy enough that, after they have lunch at one of the restaurants on the pier in extremely stereotypical tourist fashion (Beca's a little ashamed, Chloe isn't), they can go and blend in with the crowd and lie on a towel on the sand, taking in the atmosphere.

They have dinner at a small café not far from Beca's apartment, one that Beca says has been her favourite for a while. It's not hugely popular, by any means, but it's nice, and it's quiet and kind of private.

They're about to leave the restaurant when Beca's phone starts ringing from where it is sitting, face-down, on the table, and Beca looks surprised.

"Um, sorry, I thought that was on silent, I'll just ignore-" she starts, flipping the phone over. "huh, it's my mother. Ah well," she slides across the screen to ignore the call.

"Such a great daughter," Chloe jokes, and Beca shrugs.

"I'll text her and explain I was busy when we get home."

Beca's reply text turns into a reluctant reply call, and Chloe is across the room as Beca leans against the kitchen bench, but she can still hear Beca getting an earful for not telling her mother that her girlfriend was in town for a few days and if she's disappearing off to Australia soon then _why can't she meet her now?_

The idea makes Chloe nervous, and she can tell Beca is too, but she still can't help but laugh at her girlfriend's scowl in response to the grilling. Eventually, with Chloe's permission, Beca relents and agrees to her and Chloe having lunch with her mother tomorrow, as long as it's not at her house and no one else is involved.

So, Chloe meets Beca's mother – Sarah –, forcing her nerves about everything to the side because she knows that Sarah was right, with Chloe heading back to Australia tomorrow, there probably wasn't going to be much chance for them to meet any other time within the foreseeable future. Apparently, Beca had insisted that none of her family come over to Australia with her, even initially, because she wanted to make a point of doing it herself. They could visit _after_ she was settled in, if they wanted to.

Chloe liked Beca's mother. She was brighter than Beca on first impression, and she was clearly a creative type. The latter was unsurprising to Chloe, though: Beca was too, just in a slightly broodier way, and she had to have got it from somewhere.

As much as it pains Chloe – and Beca – to know that they won't see each other again for close to a month after Chloe leaves, Chloe feels a slight tinge of happiness when she lands in Sydney sixteen hours after saying a (tearful, she'd admit) goodbye to Beca at LAX. It's been a long time away from her friends, and her family, and her home country. She missed the accent, weirdly enough, and she knew hers had temporarily become a strange hybrid Australian-Canadian-American mix.

She would've loved to go straight to her place in Sydney after the flight, but her parents had other ideas, her mother meeting her at baggage claim with a _very_ long hug before hurrying her into the car to drive to their house in Wollongong.

"Now, we've got an hour or so – tell me _everything_ ," Chloe's mother enthuses, as they merge onto the freeway just outside of the airport, and Chloe can't help but laugh lightly as she sorts through the last few months, trying to work out where to start.


	2. Chapter 2: Arrivals

**A/N:** These oneshots won't necessarily all be in chronological order, they are mostly distinct oneshots and will just happen as they come to mind and I write them, but this one fits in after the previous.

* * *

Beca doesn't cry when she says goodbye to her parents at LAX. Okay, so she's done a bit to repair her relationship with the two of them in the couple of years since she finished high school, but she's still not that kind of person. They would probably be accompanying her to Australia for the first week or so if she was, but she didn't want them to. She wanted to do this herself.

The flight is insanely long. Seven Keys never got to Australia – Europe and a couple of shows in Asia, yeah, but they always did incremental movements between countries and Beca had never done anything longer than New York to London. LAX to Sydney was twice as long as that again. She was kind of glad she hadn't had a chance to catch up on a couple of TV shows in a while, and equally glad that it was very much an overnight flight, so she could try and sleep most of it away.

Beca wakes up as the sun rises outside the plane. The screen on the seat in front of her tells her that they're somewhere near New Zealand, and they've got three hours left. She switches over to the TV selection, then, trying to find something to watch, quietly glad that – despite the cabin lights now coming on again as the sun shines through the few opened window shades – most of the people around her are still clearly asleep, giving her at least some measure of privacy.

She gives up watching the TV five minutes into the show she's selected, feeling her mind start running in distracted circles, her attention drifting from the show. She's had plenty of time to process this move, but it doesn't change the fact that it's kind of… big. She's going to be living in another country! She even reluctantly applied for a room on-campus, and okay it's better than American dorms because she gets her own room but it's still… social. Beca likes to think she's not anti-social, but she's sure as hell not social. This is going to be terrifying.

Beca continues working herself up into spirals of nerves for the remainder of the flight. She knows it's not helpful, but her laptop is in her bag in the overhead compartment and the man between her and the aisle is much too asleep to get past so it's not like she can mess around with music or anything to try and distract herself.

As the plane – finally – touches down on the tarmac in Sydney, Beca remembers to be nervous about something else, too. She was just going to get an uber from the airport straight to campus – the place she was living said that they were cool with people arriving before the time they were meant to if it was because of international flights – but Chloe insisted otherwise. So, Chloe was picking her up from the airport, and because of course her girlfriend wanted to give her room to be antisocial if she wanted, she'd told Beca that they could decide whether Chloe would drive her straight to campus or they'd go via Chloe's place for a while too once she got there.

She knows that the logical thing to do would be to go to Chloe's place, because she's not meant to be at her residence until midday and the flight got in at 8am, but she's… kind of scared. She hasn't seen her girlfriend for a month. Sure, they've talked so much that the flight she was just on was probably the longest they'd gone without talking since Chloe left LA, but that's different to real life.

Beca is so busy thinking to herself that her mind doesn't really catch up with her until she's already left the plane, picked up her single suitcase – it was easier to get most of her stuff shipped separately –, and taken out her passport and visa papers, handing them to the woman at the immigration desk.

"Oh, studying here? What university?" The woman asks, conversationally, and Beca wants to be annoyed, but she tries to force herself to remember how annoying grumpy immigration agents are. She had to deal with a shocker in France, once.

"Um, University of Sydney," she answers, trying to force a smile without it looking, well, forced.

"It's a lovely campus there, I hope you enjoy it!" the woman responds, and Beca thanks her, before the conversation turns a little less conversational and a little more immigration desk appropriate as she answers the required questions. Ten minutes later, she's wheeling her suitcase past a very large "welcome to Sydney" sign and through a double set of doors into the main arrivals lobby.

Chloe is easy to spot – unlike the last time one of them was meeting the other in an airport, there's no current hysteria about either of them releasing a song about a redhead named Chloe and thus no need to hide vibrant red hair. Chloe seems to spot Beca just as quickly and starts walking towards her. Beca suddenly feels horribly awkward, unsure of the right way to greet her – should she hug her? She wants to, and she kind of wants to kiss her, but should she? – but somehow still forces herself to keep walking forwards.

"Beca! You're here!" Chloe says, predictably excited, pulling Beca into a hug. Okay, so the hug was the right call. Beca feels her nerves settle, just a little, and she wraps her own arms around Chloe.

"I'm here… It's weird," Beca responds, reluctantly pulling away from Chloe a few moments later, and Chloe laughs.

"You're super nervous, aren't you?"

"I can't pretend I'm cool and totally fine or anything to you, can I?" Beca answers, faking an exasperated sigh, watching Chloe shake her head.

"Come on, let's get going – do you want to go straight to your place?" Chloe asks, motioning towards the exterior doors of the airport, "by the way, I'm glad you're in shorts – it's kinda warm today."

"I'm from California, I can do hot."

"It's like… okay, 42 Celsius means nothing to you, but I think it's like 110 and humid? And it's not even 9am?" Chloe shrugs, and Beca sighs.

"Okay, that's bad."

"Yeah. Want me to take your bag? And answer my question from earlier, by the way," Chloe adds. Reluctantly, Beca lets Chloe take the suitcase and takes a deep breath to try and calm her nerves.

"Are Aubrey and Amy at your place?" she asks, her voice more clearly nervous than she'd hoped it would be.

"Amy's out of town and Aubrey will have left for work by the time we'd get there," Chloe explains as she takes Beca's hand in hers not holding the suitcase, trying to help the her nerves, and they start walking out of the airport. Beca feels herself blush as she looks down at the ground, biting her lip to try and contain her smile. They had got in to the habit of holding hands in California, and it was nice.

"Can we go via your place?" Beca finally responds, after they're outside and Chloe is guiding her towards the short-term carpark.

"Sure, it's probably better if you turn up at the on-campus place when everyone else is – easier to slot in to the social stuff without any awkward standing around, then, and I know you're probably dreading all that."

"Yeah," Beca responds, sighing quietly, feeling Chloe squeeze her hand in response. If Chloe wasn't here, she'd probably be fighting her anxiety by being cold and grumpy instead, so as much as she still hates the feelings thing it's a little better.

Chloe drives a cute little hatchback that is as red as her hair, and it kind of makes sense to Beca. Their hands separate so Chloe can reach into her bag and get her keys, and Beca awkwardly stands and watches as Chloe puts her case in the back, before – gently, it has her laptop in it – throwing her carryon bag in beside it and walking to the passenger seat. At least she's remembered that it's on the other side to what she's used to.

Chloe can tell Beca doesn't mean to be silent as they drive out of the airport and towards the house she shares with Aubrey and Fat Amy. Her girlfriend is staring out the window, evidently processing the environment she's now in, wringing her hands together in her lap. If they weren't in early-morning traffic, Chloe would probably reach over and take one of her hands, but it just wasn't safe at the moment. Instead, she puts the radio up a little louder – she knows how much Beca uses music to keep her mind under control – and focuses on the road, throwing only occasional glances to her left.

"Sorry I'm being so quiet… I'm just…" Beca breaks the silence, ten minutes into their drive.

"Processing. I know. It's fine, baby, be as quiet as you need to," Chloe hopes that Beca doesn't notice her accidental pet name. It wasn't the first time she'd used it, but the others had been mostly joking.

"Thanks," Beca replies softly, and Chloe glances over to see Beca noticeably blushing and now looking her way. "I'll need to kick up the social soon, but I am… so lucky I've got you for now."

"You could have totally been silent to an uber driver too."

"Yeah, and then immediately had to jump into forced stuff with people I don't know… Nope. Easing into it with you will be much better. I actually like talking to you," Beca shifts in the seat so she's facing Chloe, feeling some of the tension fall out of her mind. Chloe laughs lightly at her comment, focusing back to the road as she merges onto another freeway.

"How far until your place?" Beca asks, another ten minutes of slightly more comfortable silence later.

"Like two minutes, if the traffic isn't bad up here," Chloe replies, and Beca makes some sort of acknowledging noise, knowing Chloe wouldn't see her nod.

* * *

Chloe's house is an actual house, and it feels weird to Beca for a moment until her slightly jet-lagged and still mildly panicking brain remembers that she lives here with two other people, so yeah, it's a three-bedroom house. The inside is neater than she expected – Chloe tells her that a lot of that is Aubrey -, other than one end of the dining table, which is covered in papers and what looks like party supplies and a glittery feather boa.

"I don't even know, Amy left it there before she went back to her parents' place last weekend," Chloe explains, "I'm both terrified and excited for you to meet her. She's… out there."

"Can't wait," Beca answers, not sure if she's being sarcastic or serious, as she follows Chloe through to her bedroom.

"I only really spend time in here when the others are both away, which isn't that often, so it's a little boring," Chloe explains, moving over to sit on her bed and smiling as Beca joins her. She has almost expected Beca to be awkward and unsure about where to sit or stand, like the other times they've spent time together, but the fact that her girlfriend seems comfortable in her presence makes her feel kind of… helpful, or at least, not totally useless.

"I missed being around you," Beca comments after a moment of comfortable silence.

"Same. I'm really excited that you're here now and like… all this is real," Chloe answers, her tone a little softer than usual, and Beca nods.

"I'm actually excited about everything here… even all the stuff I'd usually hate like forced socialising with other people in my residence and singing up for courses and all that stuff. I just got hit by a wall of panic about everything about when I was flying over New Zealand…"

"Oooh, New Zealand? That's a while back," Chloe sounds sympathetic, and Beca nods.

"I slept from not long after we left LA until then, though, and you were right about doing the overnight flight to prevent time zones feeling weird… Like, it totally makes sense to my body that it's 9am even though it's the afternoon at home."

"You'll still feel weird tomorrow, though," Chloe jokes, and Beca reluctantly nods.

"And they emailed me a schedule thing for the week, there's some compulsory first year induction thing for most of tomorrow…"

"Good luck with that, then."

"Maybe I should just accidentally fall asleep here and wake up in 36 hours," Beca jokes, flopping back on Chloe's bed, and Chloe feels her heart race a little. It might take her a few days to get used to the fact that Beca is actually _here_ , and not just for a few days.

"I'll be annoyingly responsible and force you over there for your induction thing, don't worry," Chloe teases, and Beca scrunches her face up in response. "I'll totally let you skip stuff later in the week to hang out with me if you want though"

"I am one hundred percent sure I'll take you up on that."

"Good. Also I want an excuse to go onto campus before classes start next week, because I literally haven't been there since July last year and it's so weird."

* * *

They fall into the same endless conversation that they've been engaging in via iMessage for the last month easily, and it doesn't really break until a couple hours later, when they shift into the kitchen.

"You hungry or anything? I made slice yesterday, so I've got that, or fruit or whatever," Chloe explains, opening the fridge.

"You can bake?" Beca emphasises, leaning against the kitchen counter.

"It was a no-bake slice, actually… But yeah, I can."

"Already thought you were the perfect girlfriend and now I know you can make sweet things for me too? Geez," Beca jokes, and Chloe laughs. "Slice sounds good, though, if you're offering."

Chloe takes the slice out of the fridge, letting Beca take a piece first before she takes one herself and leans against the bench beside her as they both eat in a pleasant silence. Chloe is very aware, however, of the small amount of space between them. They hugged at the airport, and they held hands at the airport, and they haven't really touched since then. Okay, so it was super warm today – hence the whole 42 before 9am thing – and as much as the air con in her place was okay, double body heat wouldn't be comfortable. It still felt kind of weird for her that neither of them had moved any closer, though.

"I feel weird standing beside you and not touching you," Beca breaks the silence a minute later, clearly on the same wave length, and Chloe almost wants to laugh.

"I was literally just thinking the same thing."

"You one hundred percent sure none of your housemates are going to turn up randomly right now?" Beca checks, and Chloe gives the affirmative when she looks at her, a glint of something in her eyes that makes her heartrate jump.

Before she really knows what's happening, Beca has turned to stand in front of Chloe, her hands resting on the bench either side of her, boxing her in as she stands only a breath away.

"Missed you, Chloe," Beca whispers, before closing the final space between them.

"Missed you too," Chloe responds a few minutes later, out of breath as Beca reluctantly steps slightly away from her, earning a shy grin from her girlfriend.

"You're so fucking beautiful when you're flustered," Beca tells her, and Chloe can't really help but pull her back in for another kiss. She could get used to this.


	3. Chapter 3: Karaoke

**A/N:** Finals week is the perfect time to write fic, right?

* * *

For the most part, Beca has avoided singing at university, and she's somehow avoided most of her or Chloe's friends realising she was totally a minor celebrity once upon a time (except Aubrey and Amy, of course). And, of course, she'd never sing 'Chloe', even though it, thankfully, hadn't gone quite as 'number 5 on iTunes' in Australia as it had in the US. Sure, it'd got to 19 or something here, but that was enough for the occasional radio play only and not for anyone to recognise Beca's voice or face. Also, she'd cut her hair and dyed it a little darker just before she'd moved over here. She hoped that was helping her anonymity. She knew Chloe liked it darker, anyway, so that was what was really important.

Unfortunately, it seemed her avoidance of singing could only go so far. Jessica - a girl who reminded her so much of Ashley it was almost scary, and she really wanted them to meet - had suggested a whole bunch of them go out to a karaoke place. Somehow, her social group that had formed at the dorm had merged with Chloe's comfortably quite early in the year, and it worked well. However, it meant she really couldn't say no to an outing when everyone else had said yes, including Chloe. Especially when, this time, Fat Amy had thrown a wink at her when Jessica talked about how great at singing everyone probably was, and she'd had to distract everyone from the swift kick to her leg Beca had instinctively responded with. At least, she figured, it was one of those places with private rooms, not a full-on karaoke bar, so she could control things a little if need be.

The night started relatively calmly, the first round of drinks not yet having their effect and everyone still feeling a little self-conscious about singing in front of eight other people. Chloe was given reluctant permission to skip the actual singing because she was recovering from a cold, Beca really not minding. She's heard Chloe sing before, she's pretty sure her girlfriend is more talented than anyone would expect in that department anyway, and she knows her voice makes her feel things she'd prefer not to feel in public. Also, Chloe has been _miserable_ with this cold and she hated seeing her that way, so anything that could make it worse is a definite no.

Beca is not recovering from any illness (she's not sure how - they hadn't quit making out while Chloe was sick, mostly because it helped with her girlfriend's generally sour mood), so she can't avoid the pressure from everyone to take her turn when the other six people in the room have had theirs. She picks The Killers, because she's been on a bit of an old school emo thing lately, and she picks something that she knows is a little too low for her range. It kills her a little to sing flat notes on purpose, and it annoys her a lot that everyone except Aubrey and Amy raves about how good at singing she is afterwards because that was _not_ good for her. But that's okay. Annoyance is better than that little secret coming out.

"Intentional?" Chloe whispers in her ear, as Beca resumes her seat half on top of the redhead. They're not subtle.

"Mhm," Beca acknowledges, her fingers linking with Chloe's across their laps as both of their attention is drawn back to the group's conversation.

Beca can feel the reigns on her thoughts loosening, over two hours in to the evening, but she is far less drunk than everyone else in the room. Chloe isn't going super hard either, but someone had told her whisky was good for a sore throat, so while her hands had been aware they were in a public place and had come to rest on Beca's thigh just below the edge of her skirt, they had wandered a little further up before settling.

Aubrey was smashed, and evidently a lot fonder of loudly singing 80s diva-pop than anyone except Chloe or Amy had previously known. They all happily laughed at her, and Beca joined in the teasing, quietly happy that it also meant she hadn't been called on again. In this state, though, she's starting to quietly think about how fucking much she misses singing.

"Beca! You haven't sung for ages! Come on!" CR calls out, louder than necessary, evidently having some insight into her thought process.

"Fine," Beca fake-sighs, standing up and going to select a song, trying to quickly flick through ideas in her head, fighting the alcohol clouding her judgement.

"No wait!" Jessica yells, "I'm gonna pick your song!"

"Why?" Beca asks, but her question is lost in the vocal support everyone else gives to Jessica's suggestion.

"Chloe isn't being embarrassed by singing so I'm gonna make you embarrass her!" Jessica explains, stumbling over the edge of the table a little as she moves over to the front with Beca.

"I'll take that," Beca answers, grinning conspiratorially over at her girlfriend, who just shakes her head

"That might be a bad thing Beca," Amy tells her, seemingly unaffected by the copious amounts of liquor she's consumed.

"What?" Beca looks at her, a little confused.

"This one! I knew there was a sappy love song called Chloe, it was popular in summer," Jessica gestures wildly at the screen behind Beca, and Beca freezes a little, not wanting to turn around and have her fears confirmed.

She does anyway, though, and sure enough, the song Jessica is just about to click play on is Chloe, artist Seven Keys. Fuck. How does she do this? Mess up her own song on purpose? Sing it bland and flat where she can? Just do it and hope no one notices it sounds kind of like the original?

She doesn't usually drink much, though, and whenever she has had a little she tends to start running on autopilot. Her autopilot is fairly well trained when it comes to singing her own songs.

She has the control to at least look awkward, to turn off her the part of her performance autopilot that is more focussed on actual performance, but she sings it. She sings it properly, with technical exactness and the same emotion she put into the recording of it before she was with Chloe. It's her song - how could she not?

Beca's brain catches up with her as soon as she finishes.

"Hey, As- er, Jessica! You do shit now! Um, do Katy Perry," Beca rushes, turning back to the screen and queueing the first track she sees before throwing the microphone to Jessica and hurrying back to her spot without making eye contact with anyone. There is a beat of silence that has her freaking out, but it's quickly broken by Lily squealing - the girl only has two volumes, zero and eleven - and then everyone gushing about her little performance.

"How were you so good at that?" CR asks, almost exasperated, and Beca shrugs, trying to brush it off.

"Maybe it matches my range? Not sure. I sing a lot. I haven't sung it before," she replies, hoping they believe her and move on, feeling herself sobering up as she tries to control her rising anxiety. It seems luck, alcohol, and Chloe's libido are on her side, as she sits back down and the attention in the room shifts.

"Oh my god you didn't embarrass Chloe she just looks turned on!" Aubrey points out loudly, and Beca finally meets her girlfriend's gaze to see hungry eyes and a sly smile. She joins in the laughing, of course, before pressing her body a little closer to Chloe and entwining their hands again to prevent them moving elsewhere. Singing that song makes her feel things, too.

"I love you," Chloe mumbles, softly, but the others are still looking at them, still not moving on.

"Love you too," Beca answers, quickly deciding to bury her face against her girlfriends' shoulder with the aim of not jumping her in semi-public. It works, the others rolling their eyes and jeering at them a little before they move on.

"Think you avoided anything?" Chloe asks, and Beca just shrugs, knowing it'd be better not to say anything.

It isn't long before the night comes to an end, but in that time Beca has thrown back a few more drinks to calm herself down. She knows she's meant to just go back to her dorm with the majority of the group, but her mind is distracted and still a little worried, and she's clambering in to Chloe's Uber before she can realise she was going to wander the short distance to campus with the others, not follow her girlfriend. Beca decided to just go with it, though, feeling Chloe's side burning against hers.

"What happened to going home?" Amy elbows her side as she slides in after Beca, and Beca just shakes her head, feeling Chloe's hand resume the place on her thigh it had occupied for most of the night.

* * *

Beca wakes up in Chloe's bed, Chloe still asleep beside her, way earlier than she wants to and for no apparent reason. She'd even remembered to put her phone on silent! She begrudgingly reaches over to where said device sits on the bedside table to check the time, instead greeted by a string of messages from Jessica on her lock screen.

"Shit," she mumbles, her eyes coming into focus and realising they aren't just 'ha ha you got drunk and went home with your girlfriend' teasing messages. Reluctantly, she swipes across the screen to open them.

' _Something sounded weird about you singing that last song so I listened to the song when I got home and I was drunk so I just thought yeah okay sounds similar whatever and passed out…_ ' the first message reads, and Beca takes a deep breath. She wishes it stopped there. It doesn't.

' _But I listened again this morning and it's so similar? And I looked up the band and… The lead singer looks like you, and had your name, and apparently quit and disappeared after releasing that song in January…"_ the message trails off, nothing more, and Beca sighs, a little louder this time.

"What's up?" Chloe mumbles from behind her, and she's surprised, almost having forgotten someone was asleep beside her as she disappeared into her own world of worry.

"Sorry, did I wake you?" Beca whispers back, trying to control her increasing panic, shoving her hands back under the covers but still holding her phone.

"Nah, but what's up baby?" Chloe replies, her voice a little clearer, and Beca shifts back around to face the redhead and hands her phone over with the messages open. "Oh, shit, do you have any idea how you're going to respond?" Chloe mutters after scanning over the messages.

"Not really. I hadn't really prepared for anyone to work it out…"

"Tell her to keep it to herself for now and you'll have a chat to her later?" Chloe suggests, feeling Beca curl against her.

"Yeah, I guess that works," Beca mumbles, taking her phone back and reluctantly shifting away from Chloe to give herself some room to type something.

' _Hey, yeah… I'll be back in a little bit, we can have a chat then? But please don't tell anyone anything?_ ' Beca responds, eventually, knowing it sounds a little desperate but hoping that plays in her favour.

' _Okay, let me know when you're back_ ' Jessica replies almost instantly and Beca sighs as she roughly places her phone back on the bedside table.

"How do I even explain that I've kinda lied about something like that? Without sounding like an ass, or literally just a liar, or even sounding stupid?"

"Do you want me to come with you?" Chloe asks, sensing that Beca is starting to really panic, a slight tone of worry leaking through in her voice. Beca pauses for a moment before she answers, and Chloe goes to reach out and pull her girlfriend closer, until she shakes her head.

"I want to say yes. You keep me calm. But I think I need to do this alone, because it might happen again, and... yeah."

"Of course, if you think that's what you need to do. When are you going?" Chloe responds, a little cautious, not wanting to add time pressure.

"Soon, but... I haven't even said a proper good morning to you yet, so in a minute," Beca's tone turns a little suggestive and Chloe can't help but blush a little at the rapid switch in Beca's eyes, now focussed entirely on her. After another moment of silence, the two almost challenging each other to break first, Beca shifts herself onto Chloe and brings their lips together.

"This... is why I wrote a song about you," Beca murmurs a little while later, having delicately brought their kissing slowly back down to a stop.

"Because I'm a great kisser?" Chloe jokes, and Beca laughs, poking her arm lightly.

"Probably part of it, but it was because you make me feel warm and comfortable and I love you a tonne," she shifts to rest her head against Chloe's shoulder, looking up at the ceiling, "now to go admit to someone else that I wrote that song about you."

* * *

Beca awkwardly knocks on Jessica's door when her friend asks her to come over, bypassing the 'just walk in' rule that she's recently got used to actually accepting. It kind of amazes her how close she's got to Jess, and the others in her dorm, in only a couple of months. She hopes this doesn't fuck with it. Will she be pissed she lied? Awkward about it? Weird to her? Treat her differently? Beca always hated people that talked to her like she was some kind of alien because of her job. That's one of the reasons Chloe had been so refreshing to talk to when they first met: she admitted to being a fan, and yet, she spoke to Beca as if they were on the same level - because they were.

"Hey, come in," Jessica answers her knock, opening the door. Beca steps in, noticing that Jess looks more hesitant than usual to interact with her, and Beca feels a wave of dread wash over her as she sits on the edge of Jessica's bed, as she usually does, and looks up at Jessica stood by her desk, waiting for the other girl to say something.

"So like... it was mostly drunk curiosity last night, but this morning I was confused, and like..." Jess trails off as she sits in front of her laptop and brings up google image search, shifting the screen towards Beca to make a point. Beca can't see what exactly she searches, but the screen is quickly filled with images of her in professional mode. Performing, photo shoots, a couple of paparazzi shots from just after 'Chloe' shot up into the top ten in the US. It's only then that Beca realises how much of a disconnect she's quickly manufactured between her life now and the last few years, because those don't even feel like her.

"Yeah, that's... that's me," she admits, reluctantly, despite her internal realisation. "I was lead vocalist in Seven Keys from when we formed, when I was in ninth grade, until we broke up - mutual choice - this January. It was my brother Tristan until he quit a few years ago to have a kid, and Chris and Dylan, some other guys we went to school with. I dropped out of school after year ten to tour and write music and whatever, that's why I'm a later university admission..." Beca's explanation trails off, not sure where else to go.

"Why did you hide that? Now I think about it there's like... definitely things you've lied about to keep it in the dark," Jessica responds, looking as if she's struggling to process.

"I didn't want people to treat me weirdly because of it. It's just kind of... a past job. That happened to be quite public-facing. And I loved making music, but I'm not a publicity person and I wanted to leave that behind as much as possible, so..." Beca trails off.

"I guess that makes sense. You don't seem like you'd be cool with all that, although I was kinda surprised how confident you were singing but I guess that makes sense too now," Jessica's voice is starting to sound less agitated, but Beca still remains careful, not sure she's okay with it all just yet.

"I'm used to singing in front of people. We did Times Square on New Year's Eve as our last performance, which was fun and kind of makes a few people at karaoke easy, but then after that one people kept coming up to me in the crowd after, wanting photos and shit, and it was weird because I just wanted to hang out with Chlo, because we'd just got back together, and I hate that whole thing because I'm just a person and... yeah. I didn't want to risk having to deal with any of that here," Beca explains again, leaning forward and resting her elbow on her leg.

"Was that song about Chloe?" Jess asks, and Beca lets out a sarcastic laugh.

"What tipped you off? No, it is. I wrote it when we weren't really together and there was a question mark over if we ever would be even though we both wanted that. It was only ever recorded and released because we were on tour and one of the guys heard me mumbling it," Beca shakes her head.

"It is a really good song. I liked it when it was around... obviously Chloe knows, did Amy and Aubrey?"

"Yeah. Chlo told Aubrey what was happening with me all the time, I think. And they live with Amy, and she's super nosy, so. Aubrey called Chlo less than five minutes after we released the song even though it was 2am here to ask if she knew about it…"

"Did she?"

"Yeah. I got her to okay it before I let them release it. And she was with me when it released. Helped me write the note that the band was over..." Beca trails off with a shrug.

"I'm gonna need all the details about you and Chloe you've skimped out on giving now you know..." Jess says, her tone teasing, and Beca grins.

"I'll tell you sometime."

"I promise I won't be weird about the band thing though. Like... I understand why you'd want to get away from parts of it. And my first reaction was kind of like, are you hiding it because you don't trust us or you don't think we're good friends? But I think I understand now. And I won't tell anyone or anything."

"Thanks Jess," Beca responds, feeling her body finally relax. "I think I might say something to the others that were there last night, though. If you figured it out…"

"Maybe. By the way, I am going to try and force you to rep this dorm for the band competition now, like, you are literally a professional," Jessica adds, and Beca laughs.

"Ex-professional, but yeah okay, I miss performing. I'll see if I get past auditions."

* * *

"Wait, so you're literally famous?" CR asks, sitting with Lily, Jess, and Sophia scattered around Beca's room as she explains what Jess had worked out.

"I mean… not really. More used to be semi-known?" Beca shrugs, and CR nods.

"That's cool, I guess. Why'd you give that up to wrestle with essays?" Sophia asks, and Beca shrugs.

"We were due to sign a new contract that would've kept us doing it for another ten years. In ten years' time I might want to have a stable life somewhere, not be touring and shit… But I do have essays to write, so get out of here unless you want to study," she lightens her tone as she feels her mind start to resist the overshare and changes the subject, looking across her friends, although she's not _entirely_ joking about kicking them out.

"Okay, okay, when do we next get to hear you sing though?" CR asks, clearly joking, and Beca shakes her head.

"Jess is pressuring me to audition for that band competition between the dorms. Maybe then. I am only ever doing karaoke again if I'm super drunk though."

"But you were better when you were drunk!"

"Yeah, because it was my song! And also I maybe fucked up the first one on purpose because I was sober enough to think to do that? That might've been a thing… but get out!"

"I'm staying, I'm writing shit too," Sophia tells her, lightly shoving Lily off a spot on the bed as she grabs her laptop from


	4. Chapter 4: Jacaranda Hall Band - Part 1

**A/N:** Covers the end of Beca's first semester in Australia and into her second. Part 2 to come in a few days. Also Beca's dorm is modelled off dorms from a different Australian uni, and I don't know much about USYD in general so as much as these are now primarily set at USYD, it's AU USYD.

* * *

"Hey, band auditions are today," Josh reminds Beca as he takes a seat across from her in the dorm cafeteria at breakfast. "I saw you on the list, right?"

"Yeah, I'm on there," Beca answers, trying to force her tone to sound a little more upbeat than it usually would. She was up early - for her standards, anyway - for the audition, because she'd had to slot it in before a day full of classes. Why they couldn't run them on a weekend or another day, she's not sure, but she's not about to ask Josh - the band director - this.

"You're usually kinda quiet, you okay with singing in front of other people?" he asks, and Beca has to fight to stop herself from laughing.

"I've done it a few times," she answers, instead, and he nods before their conversation moves on.

Beca certainly doesn't eat all her meals in the communal cafeteria, but she's come to eat here more than she would've expected. She's grown to like having just a bit of socialisation in every day, and not always just with her closest friends. It's different, but generally the only people that sit near her she'd be happy to talk to, so it's okay.

The audition process is extremely casual, she knows this. The competition between the dorms is fierce, but they're all just students, and her dorm is particularly relaxed about anything extracurricular being the smallest by far. They're not uncompetitive, they just value fun more than winning. Beca puts some, but not too much, effort into choosing something to sing, and she runs through it to herself one time and then a second time reluctantly in front of her friends because they ask. She puts more effort into constructing a fake musical history to give Josh or Elaine, whichever of the band directors ends up at her audition.

She's quietly relieved when it's Josh, she doesn't get on super well with Elaine. They're not enemies or anything, but they're certainly not friends. She wouldn't sit with her at a meal, and she's pretty sure they've never spoken, which is something that she can't say about too many people in the relatively small dorm. The interview setup is relaxed, a few chairs thrown around a table in the music room. Beca sits slightly angled across from Josh, because straight across is too awkward, and he smiles at her.

"So, few questions first. You're wanting to sing, yeah?" Josh asks, and Beca just nods, prompting him to continue. "Do you have vocal training?"

"Yeah, quite a bit - ten years or so," she replies, Josh looking visibly impressed as he writes it down. It wasn't technically a lie, either - her parents put her in singing lessons when she was about six, and she kept them up until just after she dropped out of school to be in Seven Keys.

"Any performance experience?" He goes onto his next question, and Beca nods, trying to frame her answer.

"Yeah. I was vocalist in a band with a few friends for a while before I came over here, we did a few gigs," she answers, feeling a little guilty for the vast underselling she gave. Few gigs, national and international tours, same thing, right?

"Sounds like you got a lot, then, it'd be great to have someone like you as lead vocalist, we're probably looking for three total... you want to sing something, so I can check you don't somehow suck?" Josh's tone turns joking, and Beca gives half a laugh.

"Yeah, sure," she answers, standing up and stepping away from the table slightly as Josh indicates for her to do so.

Beca starts partway through a verse, only giving a verse and a chorus, but she knows it's enough. Josh smiles and jots something down on the paper in front of him as she sings, looking back up and giving her a wide grin when she finishes.

"Yeah, there's a high chance you'll be lead vocals, but official list will be up in a couple days hopefully," he tells her, and Beca nods, unsure what else to say. "Also, you should probably be sitting here, not me."

Beca just laughs and shakes her head, before saying goodbye to Josh and walking out of the music room and off to get ready for class. She's trying to be cool about it, but just quietly, she's kind of excited to do something like this again.

* * *

"Does that mean I'll get to see you perform again? Because we both know what went down the last two times that happened," Chloe asks, walking hand-in-hand along a street with Beca a few days later after they've been out for dinner. They've settled in to weekly dates and seeing each other at least every couple of days, and it's nice. It's comfortable. Chloe was a little worried they might lose some kind of spark without distance and drama, but they hadn't in the slightest.

"If you come to the dorm band comp I guess you will... but no hotel rooms this time. I'll totally still-" Beca pauses, glancing around them, and Chloe is a little confused until she finishes, "I'll totally still go down on you though."

"Beca!" Chloe exclaims, feeling herself blush at the unexpected comment and Beca's sly grin. "Not what I meant."

"You complaining?" Beca teases, and Chloe can't help but squeeze her hand a little tighter, and pick up her pace a little.

"Nope."

"Will you go to the band thing?" Beca quickly reverts the subject and Chloe almost wants to laugh.

"Yeah, I know it's usually a fun event and I like watching you perform. Aubrey and Amy might come too," Chloe nods, loosening her grip on Beca's hand back to what it was before to match Beca's calming down. As much as she'd love to drag her home and into her bed, this walk was nice too. She had always loved Sydney, but she loved it more when she could experience it with her girlfriend. She couldn't help but let out a happy sigh as Beca started lightly swinging their hands between them, and she felt every muscle in her body relax as she glanced over to see the light smile she was giving her, returning it in kind.

"You know..." Beca draws out her statement, a few minutes of comfortable mostly-silence later as they walk leisurely in the vague direction of Chloe's house, Chloe sensing a sudden wash of nerves invading Beca's demeanour.

"Yeah?" Chloe prompts gently when Beca doesn't continue.

"Everyone has started talking about how they're going to wherever their parents are between semesters, and I don't mind at all that I'm not going back to California but like..." Beca pauses, taking a deep breath, "I kind of miss my parents. And Tristan, and the kid. And I didn't expect to... and I miss Ashley, too."

The statement surprises Chloe a little, because it came completely out of the blue. Beca barely mentioned her family, and although Chloe sometimes wondered - especially with Tristan and his young family - everything seemed fine.

"Do you talk to them often?" she asks, carefully, looking up to see they're almost at her house.

"Ashley yeah, but the others not so much. I only talk to Tristan every few weeks, and the parents every couple..."

"It's totally normal to miss them. Even though you're not super close with them. Could you work out regular FaceTime or something to try and help?" Chloe suggests, and Beca nods, considering the idea quietly in her own mind.

"I didn't think it'd be weird not talking to them because I thought I didn't much anyway, but I guess I did more than I realise. I should talk to the mother about it..."

"It can be like that. When I first moved here I thought nothing of leaving my parents, even though I am close to them. And they're only an hour away! But it was hard, I had to keep going back every month or so for a weekend or something at home, until Sydney became home. It'd be hard if you can't do that," Chloe empathises, her hand squeezing Beca's comfortably as they finally reach her house.

"I think part of me just misses having someone mothering me. Even though I kind of hate it," Beca admits as they step inside, and Chloe laughs.

"Come back to Wollongong with me for a bit, my Mum will mother you!"

"Not gonna lie, it's tempting," Beca grins, playing along at what she knows was a joke, although fully aware that she's serious under it all and Chloe probably is too.

"You know, seriously..." Chloe starts, slightly hesitant, the two girls now sitting on Chloe's bed despite the fact that Aubrey and Amy are both out.

"Yeah," Beca responds, when Chloe doesn't continue, looking to see Chloe raise an eyebrow.

"How d'you know what I was asking?"

"You weren't ever joking. Neither was I. I want to meet your Mum, and see your hometown and all that kind of stuff," Beca responds, turning shy as she finishes.

"I'm glad. I want you to as well. I also want you to call your parents more, but my mother will definitely try and step in and be your Australian Mum. She's like that," Chloe grins, and Beca leans her head on her shoulder.

"Sounds wonderful. And I will... sometime. I don't even know what time it is over there..." Beca reaches for her phone, making a small noise of surprise when the screen shows a text from her Mum, timestamped 3 minutes ago.

"Hi Beca, I hope everything is still going well in Sydney. It's been a while, would you be free to FaceTime tonight? I'm up early anyway!"

"So I have a text from her asking to FaceTime now," Beca tells Chloe, who nods as she gets up from the bed and walks over to her desk.

"Call her. I can leave the room if you want but I should probably finish something up for an assignment tonight so like..." she gestured towards her laptop.

"Nah, you can stay," Beca tells her, before quickly typing out a reply to her Mother, an incoming FaceTime call appearing on her screen only thirty seconds later. She takes half a second to check in the mirror on Chloe's closet that she looks fine, before leaning back against the wall behind the bed and clicking accept.

"Beca, it's been so long! Hi! Where are you?" Her Mother greets her excitedly and Beca almost wants to laugh.

"Hi Mom. Yeah, it's been too long. I'm at Chloe's, although I don't know how you recognised I'm not at my place only seeing the wall."

"Yours are darker. Why are you at Chloe's?" She asks, and Beca glances over the top of the phone to see Chloe smirking to herself over the other side of the room.

"Had a date tonight and just got back here a little while ago."

"Oh? Why'd you come back to her place?" Beca's Mum feigns innocence, clearly trying to make Beca flustered.

"Muuuuum," she whines, shaking her head. "You know Chloe is in the room and can hear you by the way. I thought you were nice and that would be fine but..."

"Of course I'm nice, don't imply otherwise. What've you been up to, anyway? Did you get lead vocalist for the band at your dorm?"

* * *

"Okay, Elaine has had to step down from this because something else has come up, so you've just got me directing now," Josh explains, at the dorm band's first meeting a week and a half after auditions. Beca feels a little sorry for him, but he doesn't seem fussed. Yet. "First thing is to work out a set of four or five songs to fill a twenty minute set, and I want to finalise those before the break so if you want you can start learning them on your instrument over the break," Josh continues, handing around a list of possibilities, "these are all songs that I think would suit our vocalists - Beca, Alicia and Kristen - and that I can acquire sheet music in enough forms to adapt for everyone, although if anyone wants to help me with that I'd be glad..."

Beca scans her eyes down the list as she leans against a table beside Alicia and one of the guys - Sam, she thinks - who is maybe on drums or maybe strings, she can't quite remember. This is a large-form band competition - there's 11 of them here - so she honestly thinks the hardest part will be coordinating everyone because that was hard enough with her, Dylan and Chris. Near the bottom of the list she feels a wave of panic wash over her, seeing one of Seven Keys' songs listed. It's not Chloe - it's a song called Today, from their second album - and she only slightly co-wrote that one, but it's still there. She isn't really sure how to take that.

"So, any immediate thoughts?" Josh prompts, and the room falls silent for a second before people start to speak up. Their first song is unanimous - something by Capital Cities, because it so readily permits so many instruments - and the second suggestion is almost unanimous, but Beca quickly speaks up.

"Uh, I'm sure it's fine, but I don't think I've heard of this one?" she says, not sure exactly who she's directing it to, hearing a lot of shocked gasps.

"How could you not have heard The Horses? Even not as a meme?" Sam turns to her, and she shrugs.

"Oh! You're American!" Josh exclaims a moment later, "that'd be why."

Soon, Alicia had brought it up on her phone, and Beca shrugs after a while and adds her acceptance. Two down.

"What about Today? The Seven Keys one? It's a nice upbeat one, I bet we could hype it up a fair bit?" someone from the back of the room suggests. Beca starts quietly drumming her fingers on the table behind her, trying not to be offended when a few people need a reminder of what it sounds like.

"I can put a video up here? If I can just get the screen to work-" Josh goes to turn to the AV cabinet, but Beca quickly stops him, needing to do something to stop that happening.

"Didn't admin say the screen isn't working in here? We can listen, we don't need to see anything, better than wasting time trying to get it to work," she looks pointedly at him as she speaks, and he looks confused for a moment before shrugging.

"Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, we'll listen," he brings something up on his phone, plugging it into the speaker system. Beca tries not to react as she listens to the song, watching as Josh stares intently at the video evidently playing on his phone. Suddenly, he looks up at her, and she sees a question in his eyes that she doesn't know how to respond to. Instead, she gives him an apologetic smile and shrugs. He looks away as the song ends, and the room starts debating whether it would be suitable. People are, generally, in favour, but there is a concern from the flutist and trombonist about their place in it. Beca knows where they could go, but she stays quiet.

"Any thoughts, Beca?" Alicia asks her, and she's definitely been zoning out, so she know she looks double-startled in response.

"Uh, um, not really?" She answers, trying to play it off casually and non-committal.

"I think we could kind of... leave this as a possibility, but I actually need to talk to some people about whether we can use it, because of uh, I just remembered-" Josh cuts himself off, clearly not convincing anyone in the room.

"Didn't they break up? There'd be issues getting access to the proper sheet music if they're out of contract," Beca quickly adds - a total lie, but still - and Josh nods.

"Yeah, that."

Somehow, everyone is satisfied, and a new song is brought into discussion.

They finish the meeting with three definite choices and a pile of maybes. Beca rushes off as quickly as she can, trying to escape Josh's imminent questioning, but of course they had to put their room numbers on the applications and she knows exactly who the knock at her door is five minutes later, when she's in the middle of freaking out over text to Chloe.

"Come in," she calls, reluctantly, spinning around in her desk chair and facing the door as it opens and Josh steps in.

"So you were in more than just a band with some friends?" he asks, a tinge of humour to his tone, and Beca relaxes slightly. Okay, he's not going to be weird about it, and he asked her in private. Good signs.

"I guess you could say that… I'm trying to keep it quiet, though. Evidently," she explains, cautiously, nodding when he motions to ask if he can sit on the bed.

"Yeah, no, that's cool, I won't say anything. Um, do you actually have an opinion on that song? Would it be weird for you to sing it with different people?"

"I don't know. And, um, I only had a really small part in writing that one so it's not weird that way or anything… I do know how to fit in the other instruments, we played with some extra synth stuff in it when we were producing it originally that could swap out for instrumental… But would it be unfair for the whole competition thing?" Beca asks, trying to snap herself out of the old mindset she evidently still fell into very easily when talking about music.

"I'll have to ask the organisers, I think. Are you cool if I ask someone on a confidentiality condition?" Josh asks, and Beca nods. "Great, I'll do that… By the way, I'm not going to ask you to, like, formally help me out or anything… but is it cool if I tap you on the shoulder if I need help with some of the arrangement stuff? You seem to know a bit."

"Yeah, I tried my hand at producing some of our stuff, so if you get stuck or anything, sure," she answers, still feeling too sorry for what he's got ahead of him to say no. She always liked that part, anyway.

"Awesome, thanks so much. I'll get out of your hair – and I'm trying not to be nosy, but one question… If you quit being in a professional band, why be in a highly unprofessional temp uni one?" he asks, clearly confused.

"I liked the job, didn't like the lifestyle that came with it," she answers, shrugging. At this rate, she's going to get so efficient at answering that question.

"Makes sense. See you around," Josh replies, standing up and walking out of the room, and Beca quickly spins back around to her computer to respond to the many replies Chloe had sent to her earlier freaking out.


	5. Chapter 5: Jacaranda Hall Band - Part 2

"What you up to?" Chloe asks, falling messily down on her bed beside Beca, mid-afternoon, three weeks into their winter break. They'd spent most of the break together – a week at her parent's place, during which Chloe couldn't stop smiling and internally squealing at how well Beca and her family got on, and a lot of time at Chloe's – and after their quiet lunch today, Beca had been fiddling with something on her laptop for a while as Chloe trawled through the internet, content to waste some time on BuzzFeed quizzes and Tumblr for a while.

"You know I can't hear you with those on," Beca responds, pulling her headphones off and looking over at her.

"What've you been doing?" she rephrases her question, and Beca shrugs.

"They ended up deciding to include Today – um, the Se-"

"I know your songs, babe."

"Right. But yeah, they ended up deciding to put it in the setlist, and Josh is fairly swamped trying to organise everything, so I offered to work out the arrangements for it since I already know some of the possibilities we looked at when we were first working on it," she explains, Chloe nodding along.

"Do you like arranging and… producing, I guess it is… more than singing?"

"I…" Beca looks up at the ceiling for a moment, processing. "I don't think so. Not more than singing… equally to singing. But more than touring, and photoshoots, and signing autographs, and performing when I'm on an antisocial day? Yeah."

"Would you have kept doing it if you could've just stayed in one place doing this stuff behind the scenes?"

Beca shrugs, shifting her laptop off her lap and placing it carefully on the floor beside the end of the bed, headphones neatly beside it, before she falls down to lie on her back beside Chloe.

"I might have. Part of me wants to leave that pathway open for my future. Like… I can't say that me studying linguistics has nothing to do with song writing, because I'm interested in semantics and that has everything to do with song writing. Whenever I wish I was studying something else, it's sound design. So…" she trails off.

"Do you regret quitting?" Chloe pushes, but her voice is softer – intentionally – and she carefully reaches across and entwines Beca's hand in hers.

"No. I miss it sometimes, but bigger picture, I don't regret it at all. For a lot of reasons," she answers, carefully, turning her head to see Chloe already looking at her. She knows one of them is Chloe. Chloe knows she's one of them. A ball of nerves has just suddenly lodged itself in her throat, preventing the words from leaving her mind. Chloe smiles softly at her and lightly squeezes her hand, and she tries to quietly take a deep breath. "One of them is you."

Chloe doesn't say anything in response, but her smile widens, and she nods slightly before shifting closer and pulling Beca into her arms. The last few weeks of spending so much time together, of visiting her parents, of supermarket shopping and cooking at her house whenever Aubrey and Amy weren't here and sometimes when Aubrey was here (Amy hadn't been at the house all break, claiming she needed to migrate north for the winter. She had gone to Tasmania, which was definitely not north of Sydney, but they knew to just leave it), had Chloe's mind propelling into the future and picturing coming home from work every night to _their_ house, engagement rings or wedding rings on fingers depending what mood she was in and sometimes a cat and sometimes a dog and sometimes children. But they'd known each other less than a year, and technically they'd only recently hit their six-month anniversary, so she wasn't going to voice any of those thoughts.

"I love you," Chloe settles for, instead, mumbled against Beca's cheek.

"Love you too. So much," she whispers back, shifting away slightly only so she can turn and place kisses all over her face. It's horribly cheesy, but it's how she feels right now. It's how both of them feel.

"Sorry I interrupted your work," Chloe teases, pulling back, and Beca shrugs as best she can lying on her side.

"Whatever. I was almost finished, just trying to choose between a couple of things… want to give it a listen and help me out?"

* * *

The first couple of run-throughs the band does of each of their songs when they start meeting again after the break are, well, rough would be putting it nicely. Beca even messes up – two lines, so sue her, it's early days – at one point, although mostly the three vocalists are fine and their voices happily blend together and there's been no argument about who sings what parts. It's much harder to get a cohesive and pleasant song out of eight instrumentalists than three vocalists, evidently.

Practice makes perfect, or at least passable, though. Their fourth week of rehearsals – two rehearsals a week, a schedule which Beca would have _loved_ in any of her tour prep stages – sees no obvious mistakes, mostly-correct timing, and the sound now starting to come together in all five songs they had decided on. They have a Saturday afternoon rehearsal scheduled to go for four hours, and an hour in, Josh tells them that now that the music is coming together, they need to start caring about stage presence too. Less looking down at sheet music, less looking at each other, more looking out and actually, well, performing.

And they have to work out where everyone is standing and how they're going to move, too, and Beca is initially a little confused as to why Josh looks so stressed at that prospect.

Twenty minutes in to the second hour, she understands (and she remembers the early days of her first tour). Five genuine arguments have broken out over people being in the wrong place at the wrong time, despite the fact that nearly everyone is, at most, moving a couple of paces. The two guitarists are complaining about needing to be on the other side of the vocalists for whatever reason – Josh ignoring them – and Beca can't see what's going on with everyone's stage presence, but with the amount Josh is asking people to stand up straighter or look out or just "stop hiding behind someone else, dammit", she's guessing it isn't good.

Before their first US tour, Seven Keys had undergone stage training. They had already been performing on small gig stages with no room to move for a while, but suddenly they were on larger stages, and they needed to move. Tristan and Beca ended up running into each other during rehearsals twice, and finally, the four decided that _maybe_ they'd listen to their manager's insistence that it was totally a thing, and it would benefit them, and it did. They didn't know what was missing until they added it and everything suddenly looked five times as polished. So, when the sixth argument broke out at about minute 25 of hour two, after they had finished a run-through of the Capital Cities song that was much worse than any they'd done in the last two weeks, Beca steps forward over to where Josh is and turns around to face everyone.

"What are you doing…?" Josh asks, quietly, his voice tense.

"Helping you," Beca answers, softly, mildly amused that literally no one - except Alicia and Kristen - has noticed she's moved and Josh has stopped talking, quietly waving off their confused looks. "Now, you said the actual stage is slightly wider than this room, correct?" Beca raises her voice slightly but projects it even further, the room falling into silence when she does so.

"Yeah, like a full twenty five percent wider," Josh responds, and she nods.

"Okay, so we need to remember we have more to work with than we have here – now, it seems weird, but that means everything will probably work if you take steps, uh – like 25% smaller than usual, I guess?" she turns back to the group, directing particular attentions to the bass and electric guitarists, the main flash point for disagreement so far. "Josh, can you pretend to be me for a sec?"

"Sure," Josh responds, stepping away from the front and turning to face her, standing between Alicia and Kristen.

"Why do you think you know what you're talking about?" Zach snaps at her, accusatorily, when she starts directing slight swaps of places, trying to run the performances through her head, everyone's eyes shooting to him and then rapidly back to Beca. She pauses, for a moment, throwing a quick glance at Josh before sighing. It's bound to come out sometime.

"Because I was in a professional band for a number of years and did a _hell_ of a lot of performances, including three US national tours and a European and Asian tour," she snaps back at him, smiling slightly when Sam – standing beside him – jokingly slaps him on the arm in response. "Google Seven Keys if you don't want to believe me."

"Rough burn mate," Sam jokes, Zach stepping back slightly and turning away.

"Oh my god, he's literally googling – but wait, seriously?" Zoe, sitting at the keyboard behind Zach, asks.

"Yeah. But a major reason I quit was because I hated the publicity part, so it would be very much appreciated if you kept it quiet…" she replies, trailing off hopefully, happy to see a number of affirming nods in response. Zach turns back around a moment later, raising up his hands as if in surrender, guilt clear on his face.

"Sorry I snapped. Please tell us what to do."

"Wait, Seven Keys, so this is like… your song?" Zoe pipes up again, before she can ease back into instructing, and she nods. "So we have been fucking up your song… in front of you… And Josh added stuff into your song…"

"I added it, actually."

"No comment on the fucking up?" Kristen jokes, and Beca just shakes her head, eliciting a laugh from a few of the others before they fall back into their practice.

* * *

A week before the competition, the band does a preview performance of just two of the songs – the Capital Cities song, and Today – in the dorm common room for anyone who is interested. As it turns out, that is at least two thirds of the three hundred people residing in the dorm, with the common room bursting at the seams by the time they start. Beca notices her girlfriend appear beside Jessica partway through the first song, fighting not to roll her eyes in response. Part of her knew that Jess and CR had decided Chloe should turn up for the preview, too, because they were acting way too suspicious when she had dinner with them in the cafeteria earlier.

Their dorm-mates cheer excessively loudly at the end of their first song, and somehow even louder after they finish with Today. It puts everyone on a high, even Beca, when they pile back into the music practice room for a debrief after the performance.

"You are so right that it's better in front of people," Alicia tells Beca as they take seats at the side of the room, a few people around them agreeing before they all launch into conversations about what just happened.

Josh arrives a moment later, and Beca and Zoe quickly jump up, Zoe producing a gift box of chocolates from behind her back as they say something about how well Josh has done in directing them, thanking him for his effort. They all clap, and a few of the boys let out exaggerated cheers as Josh tries to brush off the attention. Beca goes to sit back down in her chair, but she isn't entirely surprised when Josh and Zoe stop her, another box of chocolates being produced from beside the AV cabinet.

"Sorry, I know you hate this, but… I don't officially have a co-director this year, but you may as well have been, so have a thanks from all of us too because we would not be anywhere near as polished without you," Josh tells her, eliciting more cheers from the room as she shakes her head, thanks him, and quickly moves back to sit down.

They disperse out of the room a few minutes later, and Beca wanders back into the common room to find Chloe, Jessica, Sophia and CR standing talking near the entrance.

"What are you doing here?" she asks, walking up beside Chloe.

"Nice to see you too, babe," Chloe answers, and Beca feels herself blush slightly as she shakes her head and looks back at her, pushing for more of an answer. "Okay, Jessica wanted help with this anthro course I did a couple years ago, and we thought we might accidentally schedule me coming over here when the preview was on."

"Thanks, Jess," Beca says sarcastically, turning to face the offending girl.

"Hey, not my fault your girlfriend has basically done my degree a couple years ahead," Jess defends, "and why wouldn't you want her here? Support, y'know."

"More like trying to mess me up," Beca responds.

"When have I ever done that?" Chloe feigns shock.

"Oh, I don't know, the second time we met when you winked at me in the middle of a show?" she answers, almost sarcastically, only continuing this fake-argument because she knows by their responses the others are getting a kick out of it.

"Hey, I didn't know you had a thing for me, I thought you were straight," Chloe defends.

"Yeah well so did I." Beca comments before she really thinks.

"That doesn't really defeat my point."

"Oh, shush. Who jumped who backstage, anyway?" Beca asks, now getting a little invested in it. Just a little.

"Uhuh, who invited who backstage? And who asked who to 'hang out' at their hotel-" Chloe stops, interrupted.

"Who told who they loved them after a one-night-"

"two," Chloe interrupts back, and Beca rolls her eyes.

" _two_ -night stand, then?" Beca finally finishes.

"Wait, really? You know what, fuck anthro, Chloe please come and give me details about what went down between you two, because Beca has not said any of this," Jessica interrupts, and Beca laughs.

"I was gonna tell you one day. Come on, I'm going to my room, if anyone wants to follow me then go for it," she answers, not surprised when all four of the girls do just that.

* * *

Neither Beca nor Chloe pay much attention to university Facebook drama, but three days after Beca's dorm wins the band competition, Beca is sitting in her room catching up on some readings when suddenly, her phone is blowing up. Confused, she reaches for it, initially wondering if her friends had been hit by some mass spam attack when she sees everyone she's close to at the university messaging her the same link, until she sees Chloe's accompanying message – " _I'm on campus, I'll be at yours in five._ " – and clicks it. The header of the anonymous posts group appears first, and her heart sinks. This can't be good.

" _Jacaranda Hall were cheating fucks at the band competition. Their vocalist Beca Mitchell is an American professional singer not a student. Fuck Jaca!"_

Beca audibly groans, slamming her phone on the desk and falling back on her bed. She doesn't want to deal with this. She should have literally never sang a single word in public ever again and part of her knew that, because this might happen, but she was just having fun because she likes singing, and, really, how did they work it out? Was it the song? Should she have vetoed singing Today, or was it that she still had an accent, maybe she should have worked more on getting rid of that? Or maybe she should have dyed her hair or asked for more singing parts to be given to the other girls or-"

"Beca!" Jess' voice breaks her out of her growing panic spiral, and only then does she realise that Jess and Chloe have both somehow got into her room and she must have been spiralling for way longer than she thought, and-

"Hey, Becs," Chloe mumbles, throwing herself down onto the bed beside Beca and pulling her into a tight hug, not worrying that there is another person in the room, and Beca finally remembers to speak.

"Oh, um, yeah, sorry. Panicking a little," Beca says, trying to pull herself up into a sitting position without letting go of Chloe. Her girlfriend, thankfully, gets the message and sits up with her, still holding her close.

"Should I leave you two to it? I was just letting Chloe into the building and all," Jess asks, and Beca shrugs, before shaking her head. The others expect her to say more, but she doesn't.

"Grab a seat if you want, Jess," Chloe says, and Jess nods, pulling Beca's desk chair over near the bed and taking a seat, intentionally not facing Beca, not knowing if having someone staring at her would be a great idea.

"I'm guessing you saw it, Beca?" Jess asks, cautiously, after a moment of quiet.

"Yeah," Beca mumbles, going to hide her face against Chloe's hair before seeming to change her mind. "What the fuck do I even do?" her voice raises in pitch and volume as she speaks, "what do I- I don't know-" she shakes her head, near hysterical, before looking down again.

There is a knock at the door before either Jess or Chloe have a chance to respond, and Beca's head snaps up to stare at the door, panic clearly set on her face.

"Who is it?" Chloe asks, slightly raising her voice.

"Josh, but I know that's Chloe, I can come back la-"

"Let him in," Beca mumbles, and Jessica stands up to go and do just that, ushering him into the room and quickly closing the door behind him lest anyone else be walking along the corridor and look in.

"I'm so sorry that happened, Beca, and the competition organisers won't say anything you don't approve of first. But, um, they want to confirm to people before it gets out of control that you are a student and all. But, like, they won't say anything about anything else, literally just that you are an undergrad student who lives here, I'm sorry to ask you I can see you're kind of freaking out but, is that okay?" he rushes out, clearly panicking a little himself, and Chloe would probably hug him if she weren't already occupied. Beca is clinging to her like she'd fall apart without Chloe's arms around her, so she's not planning on letting go any time soon.

"Yeah, that's – that's okay. Just, nothing else?" Beca's response is soft and rushed, but at least it's something, and Josh nods in acknowledgement.

"Please let me know if there's anything I can do," he says, finally, before quickly leaving the room again.

"At least that part's sorted," Beca tries to push her voice to be a little more stable, and tries to sit more upright, but she knows she is still hunched and mumbling and she can't help but lean further into Chloe's side when she squeezes her shoulder slightly with the arm still wrapped around her. She's had such a peaceful eight months in Australia so far, she's been able to have control over what she does and where she goes and who she interacts with and she doesn't want to lose that all again. "I don't know what to do," she repeats herself.

"I think you need to work out… exactly what you want to happen, or want to avoid. Like, do you think you could convince everyone you're not the same person, or do you just want to stop it moving outside the university? Or is the priority to make sure no one treats you weirdly?" Jessica pushes, cautiously, although becoming slightly more confident when Chloe gives her a look of encouragement.

"I… think the last two? Mostly the last one, I don't want anything to change. But I think that'd be easier if it didn't become like a… media thing. I don't have a manager or anything anymore to keep an eye on shit, I just am vaguely aware the small section of media that cared about us stopped saying anything after we disappeared," Beca says, organising her own thoughts as she speaks.

"I know you're freaking out and just want to hide now, Becs, but I think you need to respond fairly quickly to keep it contained," Chloe tells her, Beca reluctantly nodding.

"Can you grab my laptop, Jess?"

It takes the three of them 45 minutes to write something that Beca is happy with, and it takes her another ten to be able to press enter and post the comment on the original post, but somehow, she manages. She admits that was her, but she decided to quit professional music ages ago and the competition was just a bit of fun. She says that her song was picked up as an option without her input, and although she approved it, they also had it approved by the organisers. She emphasises that she's not some musical supergenius, and she was only an eleventh of the band anyway, and she just wants to be a normal student. The organisers quickly back her up, and Josh, and the response online is entirely in her favour (including a bunch of people she doesn't know promising not to let anyone be weird about it, which is a little weird in itself, but she'll take it).

The bigger test comes when she leaves her room. Chloe offered to go and get takeaway since both Beca & Jess had planned to eat in the communal dining hall tonight, but Beca shakes her head, insisting that she needs to show her face or she'll keep freaking out until she does.

"Please stay, though? I'll buy you a guest meal pass if you want to eat here," Beca asks Chloe, no longer clinging to her quite as tightly, but still needing to be surrounded by people that she knew wouldn't be weird and wouldn't let anyone else treat her differently because of anything.

"Of course I'll stay," Chloe answers, "Sorry we're making you third wheel," she directs her second comment to Jess, and Jess shrugs.

"I'm cool with it. I might grab a few of the others, CR and Sophia at least, though, to go to dinner with us?"

"Good idea," Chloe says, Beca agreeing.

The five girls walk into the dining hall and join the line for the food together. Beca can feel a few eyes on her, but she tries to reason that mere eyes are not as bad as forced interaction. She starts to panic when one of the pastoral care students approaches them, only to rapidly calm down when he stops in front of Chloe, not her, and hands her a few guest meal passes.

"We're going to consider you as technically living here for a little while, Josh suggested it," he explains, Chloe thanking him, before he quickly walks off.

They sit at their usual table, and Chloe quickly makes the decision to force usual conversational chatter until it becomes natural again. As the dinner progresses, she feels Beca relaxing beside her, not one person having made any indication of coming up to say anything at all.

"I hate that something you were just having fun with became so stressful, but at least we know now that everything should be okay, and there's plenty of people who will make sure of that," Chloe says, squeezing into Beca's small dorm room bed beside her a few hours later, and Beca nods as best she can lying down.

"Maybe this could be a good thing. Maybe it means I can be less careful about karaoke and shit and just have fun with it, if everyone else is happy to forget my past job too."

* * *

 **A/N:** Almost split this into 3 parts instead of 2, wanted to make the ending nicer, but it is what it is.  
No more fic from me until Bechloe Week because I've got some stuff planned for that...


	6. Bechloe Week 2018 Day 1: Accidental Kiss

**A/N:** Bechloe Week 2018 has a "Disney" prompt so of course I'm doing an After Seven Keys version of Bechloe week as well as a non-AU one.

 **Bechloe Week 2018 Day 1 Prompt: Accidental Kiss**

* * *

"I'm sorry I'm being so shitty about this, it's just… I'm not close to any of these people, and I don't want to put either of us in this situation, but I can't say no," Beca groans, frustrated, as she sits down on the end of the unfamiliar bed now in what was her childhood bedroom, looking up at her girlfriend standing over the other side of the room.

"You don't need to apologise, I know what it's like with family. And I get why you don't want to go through the hassle of coming out to people you don't know very well," Chloe reassures her as she moves across the room and takes a seat on the bed beside her.

It had been a joint idea for Beca and Chloe to both travel over to California over the holidays. Beca's parents had been on her case to come back and visit, since she hadn't left Australia since starting her degree two years earlier, and Chloe had been looking for something to do since she had a fair bit of time off between graduating in early December and starting the graduate job she had managed to acquire with a policy development firm. She's not entirely convinced it's the kind of work she wants to do – a little too corporate – but it's a well-paying 4-year contract that will fund whatever she decides to do after it ends.

As much as Beca encouraged Chloe to join her trip home, part of her wanted to convince her not to come over, because there was a conversation she needed to have with her parents about her own future. She was in Australia on a student visa, and as much as she wanted to stay in Australia, her visa would expire not long after she graduated in a year's time. She could probably try and move into graduate study and a job that could give her legal reason to stay… or she could embrace the desire that had been growing in her heart ever since about 6 months into their relationship and talk with Chloe about _that_ big M word, pretending it had anything at all to do with visas. She could probably get a partner visa because of Chloe without it, but she could still pretend.

They'd never discussed it, because it didn't feel like they should be yet. They were both still students (at least, until a few weeks ago), they'd only been together for two years, they didn't even live together, but they were committed. They didn't talk about marriage, but whenever they talked about their own independent futures, they always included the other.

Regardless, Chloe had ended up in California with Beca, for longer than a couple of days this time. They'd already caught up with Ashley a couple of times, and Chloe had finally met Beca's Dad, her brother, and his kid, who was now starting school, which she could tell made Beca feel _very_ old. There had been no plans for meeting any other family, given Beca had never spent time with them even when she didn't live on another continent, but one of her Dad's sisters had decided that this year they would have a family Christmas gathering at her place in San Diego.

At least, being San Diego, it could just be a day trip. No awkwardly navigating the bed situation with family who Beca had no intention of telling she was super gay and in a long-term relationship with the woman who would instead be introduced as her best friend. She hadn't needed to come out to her parents, really – it just kind of became obvious once everything with Chloe happened and she couldn't really conceal it – and her Dad was significantly less conservative than his siblings, anyway, being a literature professor.

"You two are really bad at not acting like a couple," Tristan comments, raising an eyebrow at Beca and Chloe in the back seat of his car as he drives them and his wife down to San Diego on the day. Their kid had come down with a bad cold a few days ago, so travelling was out of the question, but he was quite happy to spend Christmas with his grandma – Beca's Mum – while the adults went to this gathering that they all felt obligated not to miss.

"Yeah, well, haven't tried to before," Beca grumbles, reluctantly pulling her hand away from where it had naturally rested on Chloe's leg, knowing that was probably what he'd picked up on. Chloe doesn't say anything, simply smiling slyly at Beca, knowing the others are way more focussed on picking on Beca than her. She gets on okay with Beca's immediate family. They're nowhere near as close as her family, but they're friendly, just probably not close enough for blatant teasing.

"I distinctly remember you saying things in Toronto were _not like that_ , was that not pretending?" he continues, and Beca huffs in exaggerated annoyance.

"You know I'm not talking to you about any of that."

"Figured it wouldn't hurt to try."

Their conversation for the remainder of the trip is light-hearted and fairly sporadic, and Chloe can feel Beca getting nervous beside her. She wishes she could do something to comfort her, but the fact that she can't is probably half of the problem. It doesn't help, either, that Chloe has little idea where they're going and no idea how long there is to go.

In the end, it's about two hours after they leave that they stop in front of a relatively large house in suburban San Diego, an assortment of cars of various relatives evidently already there – thankfully, as far as Beca is concerned, one of them belongs to her Dad. It'd be much worse without him to awkwardly call all his family by their names to remind her who everyone is. It's been a while.

Her Aunt Casey – the host – greets them at the door, and Beca has to kick herself into fake-confidence mode (something she mostly developed in the context of fan interactions for her band that has become _incredibly_ useful in pretty much every aspect of her life) to introduce Chloe as her best friend from Australia, trying to make everything the least awkward it can possibly be for her girlfriend.

Casey is the most energetic of her Dad's sisters, so Beca isn't entirely surprised that she pulls all of them – even Chloe – into hugs, although they are quick. Her Dad himself appears in the entry a moment later, and along with Casey, leads the four new arrivals into the large living/dining area where almost everyone else is already gathered. It's not that they were late – this family just tends to be early.

Chloe manages to slot herself into the introductions and conversations that Beca would otherwise struggle with easily, and honestly, she shouldn't be surprised. It's in her nature, and it helps Beca start to calm down about the whole thing too. And she's not struggling too much, referring to her as her "best friend", although standing beside her without making any contact is possibly harder than she predicted. Evidently, taking Chloe's hand has almost become a part of her natural instinct.

After their largely uneventful round around the room of adults (comprising of her Dad's four siblings, their spouses, and a handful of adult children that Beca feels weird to be classified as one of now), Beca reluctantly takes her Dad's subtle direction and wanders over to where her two younger cousins, Casey's youngest boys, are sitting on a couch. William, who Beca guesses is 15 or so, is rather angrily fiddling with some kind of gaming console, while seventeen-year-old Davey appears to be trying to get him to engage with the others. Beca kind of feels sorry for them, she had been one of the kids along with them until recently.

"Hey Will, Davey," Beca starts, awkwardly, both looking up at her more enthusiastically than she had expected. "Um, this is Chloe, my best friend, we go to uni together over in Australia and she's visiting with me at the moment," her explanation is kind of messy, but it works.

"That's cool, do you have an accent?" William asks, looking at Chloe, and she laughs.

"Yeah, I definitely have an Aussie accent, I've lived there for most of my life. Beca totally has a bit of one now too though, doesn't she?" Chloe slips right into the level of conversation that works with a teenage boy, and for about the tenth time in the last forty minutes, Beca feels herself relax when she remembers who her girlfriend is.

"Yeah, you do Beca," David jumps into the conversation, seeming to lighten up on his brother now that he's at least engaging with someone.

"I mean, this is the first time I've been back to America in two years."

Casey wanders over to them a few minutes later, checking on her kids, happy to see they were finally engaging with someone other than each other or their games.

"How's it going?" she greets, mostly towards the boys, as she stops beside Chloe.

"If Beca can bring her friend to Christmas why can't I bring Jake-" William starts to ask, quickly cut off by his Mother, and Beca starts to awkwardly fidget.

"It's different, hon, Chloe is visiting from Australia, which is a lot further away than two streets over, Jake can have Christmas with his own family," Casey explains, an edge to her tone that Beca tries to ignore. Evidently knowing more to the story, David rolls his eyes and gets up, walking over to talk to some of their older cousins.

"Yeah, but Jake's my boyfr-"

"William. What did I say?" Casey cuts him off, rather aggressively, and Beca's heart sinks. Oh, shit. Shit.

"I know, but-"

"No buts, Will," she sighs, before turning to Beca and Chloe, both still awkwardly standing there, "Sorry, girls, teenage phases, you know?"

"Of course," Chloe responds, Beca immediately picking up that her smile and voice are as fake as they can possibly be without Casey noticing. Designed to get her to nod and walk away, as she does.

"So, what game were you playing?" Chloe asks, quickly, taking a seat beside William and gesturing towards the console sitting to his side as soon as she and Beca are the only people left standing beside him.

"Um, I was playing, I don't know if you've heard of it, Fortnite?" he says, voice low and cautious again, and Beca feels discomfort grow in herself. She has to say something, but how?

"Oh, yeah, one of my brothers plays that! He tried to get me to play duos with him once so he could complete a challenge but I was so bad at it… were you playing solo?" Chloe pushes the conversation further, and Beca suddenly works out what she's doing. Realising she's still awkwardly standing beside them, Beca quickly locates a footstool nearby and pulls it over to sit on, half-facing the other two.

"Duos, actually, with, uh…" Will hesitates.

"I only agreed with your Mum to get her to stop pushing you," Chloe reassures him, softly, and he nods.

"With Jake, he's my, uh, boyfriend," he finishes, before quietly adding, "Mum's usually not this bad about it, just kinda refuses to mention it, but she insisted I can't say anything today." Will glances down and wrings his hands together, resting against his jeans, and Chloe and Beca take the opportunity to glance at each other, each silently asking the same question. Chloe nods, slightly, and Beca quickly glances around, ensuring everyone is a fair distance from them.

"Hey, Will," Beca grabs his attention, and he looks up, nerves clear on his face. "You need to keep this super quiet, don't tell anyone at all, okay?"

"Sure," he agrees, quickly, looking a little curious.

"Chloe's actually my girlfriend," Beca tells him, her voice just audible enough for only him and Chloe to hear, unable to stop the smile that graces her face as she sees him light up, "we've been dating for two years. I'm choosing not to tell all the family because I don't see them very often and I don't know them very well… but it really should be up to you who you want to tell about Jake, although your Mum might just be trying to protect you but not doing a good job of explaining it."

"That's… really cool, that you guys are together," he admits, quietly, "everyone at school knows and is fine with it, I'm used to being really blatantly gay, it's uncomfortable having to pretend I'm not…"

"I totally get that," Beca empathises, Chloe nodding, "Chloe and I are really struggling today because it's very much not normal that we aren't holding hands or something."

"Your hand keeps twitching towards her," he half-laughs, and Beca nods.

"This conversation doesn't exactly help – not that I'm not totally happy to talk with you about this stuff," she tells him, and William nods.

"This is weird, but do you have Facebook? Could I add you?" he asks, quickly glancing over Beca's shoulder and adding, in a slightly louder voice, "I want to see all your pictures of kangaroos and stuff."

"Oh, totally," Beca enthuses, taking Will's phone as David returns, now standing beside Beca facing Will, and typing in her name.

"What are you three whispering about over here?" he asks, although his tone is light.

"Will was just asking us about Australia and things," Chloe explains, David nodding, and the conversation moves on.

Beca and Chloe – and, now, David and Will – mingle among the rest of the people at the gathering for a little while longer, before they are called up to the (incredibly American, to Chloe, although she doesn't say anything) kitchen servery to grab their lunch. Somehow, enough chairs have been squeezed around the dark wood dining table to fit everyone, and they eat their lunch with less noise than before, but comfortable and uneventful small talk. It's different, to Chloe: it's all wintry food (even though they're in California and it's still relatively warm outside) and eggnog, where she's used to barbecues and champagne – both outdoors, of course.

The champagne comes after lunch, though, and both her and Beca take a glass – the latter having improved her alcohol tolerance significantly over two years of living in a university college to the point that a couple of glasses will have no effect on her – and laugh along as David gets annoyed that he can't join in, Will just shrugging as he sips lemonade from a champagne glass. Beca's Dad makes some comment about David copying Beca and moving to Australia, where the legal age is younger, and Beca sees her eldest aunt go to make a disapproving comment before she quickly cuts in that she was 21 before she got to Australia, and she totally doesn't drink much anyway, so David wouldn't be doing himself any harm by copying her.

Chloe chooses that moment to rotate to the side so no one can see her reaction to Beca's lie (it's not that she's drunk often, but it definitely happens, and she wasn't quite 21 when she started), gently taking Beca's glass from her hand and offering to go and refill it.

"Thanks, Chlo," Beca responds, quickly leaning over and pecking her on the lips. She feels Chloe freeze when she does, and it's only then that she realises what she's just done.

Beca pulls back, rapidly deciding that this was too much effort to go back from. Instead, she brings a hand up to her face and half covers it, squeezing her eyes shut for half a second, feeling many a pair of eyes watching her. Chloe, she guesses, but doesn't look, is still holding both their glasses, standing beside Beca, looking more at her than anyone else in the room. When Beca opens her eyes, Tristan is walking towards them, taking both of the glasses from Chloe and setting them down on the table as he quickly ushers them out of the room and into a hallway behind the kitchen.

"Maybe William and David should go to their rooms?" the eldest aunt suggests, breaking the silence, and Beca's Dad eyes the room warily. Beca never really came out to him, she just started talking about Chloe one day and it was clear she loved her. He's not insanely close to his daughter any more – she'd drifted away from him after she reconnected with her mother around when her band had become popular and their divorce had been finalised – but he still knows that she's not one for staring or declarations of anything. She just wanted this to be easy – and he doesn't think causing a scene will help that.

"They can do what they like," Casey retorts, sharper than he expects, her gaze directed quite clearly at William. It confuses him, slightly, as does that fact that William quickly turns and walks towards the kitchen himself. He stops after a few steps, though, turning back to everyone else who is standing in awkward silence around the room.

"I'm gay, actually, my boyfriend Jake wanted to come today," William says, clear and confident, before turning again and walking out.

Will finds Beca leaning against the wall in the hallway behind her kitchen, Chloe's arm around her shoulders, as Tristan stands in front of them looking perplexed. He guesses that Beca's immediate family must know already.

"I'm sorry if talking to me made it harder for you-" Will starts, softly, but Beca quickly cuts him off.

"No, Will, you didn't cause anything. It's just so normal for me to kiss Chloe when she offers to refill a drink or something that I acted on instinct, that's always there no matter what I've been talking about."

"My Mum kind of snapped at Aunt Ellie for being weird about it," Will tells them, a little brighter.

"What was Ellie saying?" Tristan asks, and Will shrugs.

"Just that me and David should leave the room. After Mum said we could do what we want though… I kind of said I'm gay before I walked out. I didn't say too though, I don't know how you guys ID, I didn't want to-"

"Hey, it's all good, gay works for me too. And I'm glad you told them, you wanted to yeah?" Beca enthuses, and William nods in affirmation.

"I see everyone except you guys and your Dad a heap so it'll be easier if they know."

"That's great, Will," Chloe adds.

"I didn't come here to like… use something that you didn't want to happen to my advantage or whatever, though. Is there anything I can do?" He quickly asks.

"Not sure right now, but thanks," Beca tells him, and he again nods slightly.

"Beca isn't the type to be able to say something to a room of people like that," Chloe carefully changes the direction of the conversation.

"I guess Will and I could draw everyone back to groups and mingling and whatever, and you guys hide for a little while and just quietly reappear and you can answer anything people ask?" Tristan suggests, Will agreeing he'd help.

"Yeah, I guess that works," Beca sighs, shifting her head to lean against Chloe's shoulder. Chloe pulls her closer in response, noticing Will bristling with excitement at their interactions. She totally gets it, though. She would've killed to have an older gay cousin or something when she was fifteen.

Beca and Chloe re-enter the living room ten minutes later, noticeably closer together than before – although not touching. Beca chooses to first stand with Casey and her Dad, a little because they're the closest to the kitchen but mostly because there's no one else right near them.

"Why'd you agree with me earlier, Chloe?" Casey asks, no bite in her tone.

"Conflict minimisation," she answers, and Casey nods.

"Will's just a kid. I know it's not a phase, but he's had a good run with kids at school and I didn't want to risk family breaking that pattern… and I still feel awkward about the whole thing because I don't know anything, but… you two were talking to him about this stuff before, weren't you?"

"Yeah," Beca confirms, and Casey nods.

"Thanks. And, um, your Dad confirmed you two are together. How long?"

"Two years in a week," Beca answers.

"Wait, wasn't that before you went to Australia?" Casey tilts her head, and Beca seems to freak out a little, so Chloe speaks up.

"We actually met in Canada when she was doing a show in Toronto, I did an exchange semester at the university there, but we didn't pursue anything because Beca didn't know she was moving to Australia yet, she'd only just applied. But she contacted me again when she found out and we both happened to be in New York at New Years, and… yeah. Together ever since," Chloe explains, and Beca, once again, feels herself relax. Of course Chloe could smooth their story out to something family-friendly.

Her conversation with Casey is the most comfortable of any of her conversations with her Dad's siblings or their partners. Ellie doesn't say a word to her, merely curtly nodding in response to her confirmation to Casey's husband and her uncle that Chloe is her girlfriend. The others have nothing much to say, but it's just all round awkward.

She's relieved when she's suddenly standing in a group with all the adult cousins, and all they care about is that they finally know who the gay cousin – or, cousins – in the family are, although William has disappeared off to his room, evidently bored of all the adults around. And they seem to like Chloe speaking more than her, which annoys her until she realises – and then asks, everyone confirming – that it's because Chloe has a proper Australian accent. Of course, they indulge them, dragging out photos of kangaroos (actually a wallaby that Chloe ran into on a walk back in November, but close enough) and beaches for a while until William suddenly appears again.

"When are you guys leaving?" He asks, and Chloe feels her heart swell. He's such a cute kid.

"Probably in an hour or so, but you'd have to ask Tristan. We have to drive back up to LA," Beca explains, and he nods, before wandering off to talk to his mother. It's only a few minutes later that he returns to Beca and Chloe, now just talking to one of Beca's cousins.

"So, um, you totally don't have to… but Jake is meeting me at the park just down the street in a bit, he was going to come here but Mum suggested not while everyone's here… but I told him about you guys and I kinda want you to meet him. And he wants to meet you. His family doesn't do Christmas, he's Buddhist, so he's not doing much today…" he trails off, nervously.

"That sounds great, we'd love to meet Jake," Beca's response is immediate, and Chloe affirms it. It is not long later that they're walking beside a decidedly bouncy Will a little way down the street to a park, seeing a boy clearly the same age as him already waiting by the swings, the park deserted due to the occasion.

"Hey, Will," Jake greets him, a little shyly, before looking over at Beca and Chloe.

"Hey Jake, this is my cousin Beca and her girlfriend Chloe," William introduces, his hand subtly finding and locking in to Jake's as he speaks.

"It's so good to meet you Jake!" Chloe is the first to speak up, Beca soon following. Jake settles into the conversation quickly, and soon there are amicably chatting about a random array of things, none of which have anything directly to do with them all being gay.

"Can I ask how long you've known you… like girls, I guess?" Jake asks, in a lull in conversation, and Beca nods.

"I didn't work it out until I was 20… Until I met this one, actually," Beca answers, gesturing towards Chloe.

"I worked it out when I was like 15, but funnily enough, it was when I saw Beca in her first music video… I just didn't meet her until six years later," Chloe explains

"Wait, music video?" Jake queries.

"Oh, oops-" Chloe starts, looking over at Beca, but Beca shrugs.

"Beca was in a band that was kind of popular for a few years before she went to Australia, you've probably heard some of her songs, I'll play some another time," Will explains. Beca silently thanks whatever it was that made her family never realise she'd released one final song because they definitely would've worked out things with Chloe quicker and with more embarrassment to her if they had.

"Wow, you keep getting cooler," Jake directs her comment to Beca, "although I'm sorry but Chloe is just like… I feel like she's maybe cooler than you."

"Oh, she definitely is," Beca laughs.

By the time they say goodbye to Jake, Beca and Chloe have both him and Will as Facebook friends – Beca quickly asking both of them to never show any of their family any of the drunk nightclub pictures they sometimes get tagged in – and Beca kind of doesn't want to go home. They have to, though, saying still-awkward goodbyes to most of her family before getting rushed but tight hugs from Will, and sliding into the back of Tristan's car.

"You sure that kiss was an accident?" Chloe asks Beca, her tone joking, not long after they've set off. Beca can feel the other two in the car paying attention to their conversation, but she tries to ignore that.

"I swear it was totally accidental. Outcome could've been worse, though."


	7. Bechloe Week 2018 Day 2: Jealousy

**A/N:** Day 2 of Bechloe Week 2018 - "Jealousy".

Set a few weeks into Beca's first semester in Australia, ft. Aubrey being Aubrey.

* * *

"Where are you off to?" Aubrey asks, looking up from her books laid out on their dining table as Chloe walks into the room, shrugging on a light jacket.

"Going to dinner with Beca and co," she replies, cheerily, slinging her bag over her shoulder and shifting it in front of her so she can check she has everything that should be in there. Fat Amy doesn't steal things, but she's certainly fond of borrowing, and she did leave the house a few hours ago…

"Seriously? Again? Do you ever not hang out with all those bloody first years?" Aubrey's reply is surprisingly sharp and Chloe stops, looking up at her.

"What are you talking about, Aubs?" Chloe presses, her eyebrows raised. She used to let Aubrey push her around a bit in high school, but it's something she's made an effort to fight in recent years. Just because she's her best friend doesn't mean she's always right.

"You're always hanging out with them now, I don't know why you want to hang out with kids and I'm sure Beca the celebrity can handle herself and pay her own damn way," Aubrey's tone is no less sinister and Chloe takes a step back in surprise.

"Are you jealous or something?"

"No, I think you're being stupid."

"Aubrey, they're literally two years younger than us. Some of them less. They aren't kids. I'm friends with all of them. Why do you suddenly care that I'm hanging out with them?" Chloe tries to reason with her, moving to sit at the table across from her, quickly pulling her phone out to text Beca.

"Who are you texting?"

"Beca."

"Can you ever not be talking to her?!" Aubrey almost yells, and Chloe rolls her eyes.

"Yeah, but you're going to make me late so I'm giving her a heads up."

"Should just make her wait, I'm sure she does to you all the time," Aubrey sneers, feigning going back to her reading by turning a page and running her finger across a line. Chloe can tell she's not really reading, she wants a fight, and to the extent that her best friend is suddenly attacking her girlfriend she's happy to engage.

"She's literally never been late to anything we've organised, you know that," Chloe insists, and Aubrey shakes her head.

"Congrats, you slept with a celebrity, but you need to get your head out of your ass and realise that she's obviously not this person that you're making her up to be! I'm not picking up the pieces when she drops you for someone better," Aubrey's reply is cold and callous and Chloe feels her calmness start to slip away.

"What the fuck, Aubrey? You know it's not like that and it never was. And what do you mean someone better? You're meant to be my best friend. You should be saying she'd never find anyone better than me, and she'd probably agree! You know how much she means to me and you know the way I first found out who she was has been irrelevant for the entire time I've known her. And you've met her, you know she's nothing you're saying she is…" Chloe trails off, watching Aubrey's sceptical expression. "You know what? Fuck you. You're being a bitch. Sort out your shit before I get home."

Chloe is up and out the door so quickly that she doesn't hear exactly what Aubrey says in her incensed response, but she knows it isn't an apology, and it has her still fuming when she finally arrives at the little café not far off campus where she was meant to be meeting Beca, Jess, CR and Sophia for dinner fifteen minutes ago.

"Sorry I'm late, guys, got caught up with Aubrey being… Aubrey," she explains, with a frustrated sigh, sliding into the empty seat beside Beca after she's rushed in and spotted their table. She merely shakes her head when the others silently question her, seeking further explanation, and Beca's hand quickly finds hers under the table in response.

Beca's thumb stroking regularly across the back of her hand helps, but she knows she is still visibly agitated and dampening the mood of what was meant to be a relaxed dinner for the girls she was eating with to get out of the campus bubble for a few hours. She just can't help it, because she hasn't had a fight like this with Aubrey for a really long time.

When they leave, Chloe goes to say goodbye to all of the girls and head to her car, but Beca hesitates, gently pulling her to a stop.

"Uh, I might… hang out with you for a bit, Chlo, if that's alright?" Beca says, the others looking curiously at the less open than usual dynamic between the two. Chloe merely shrugs. "Um, okay, I'll see you guys back at the hall later," she turns to the other four, who seem reluctant but eventually turn and walk off in the direction of the campus, while Beca and Chloe stand still on the pavement.

"What's up, Chloe?" Beca asks, but again, Chloe just shakes her head. "Do you want to go back to your place?"

"That probably isn't a great idea," Chloe answers, finally speaking.

"Well, can we sit in your car, at least?" Beca pushes, and Chloe sighs before nodding and starting to walk towards her car, parked just down the street. Beca tries not to read into the fact that Chloe doesn't make any move to take her hand while they walk, completely out of character. Beca turns sideways in the passenger seat when they get in the car, watching intently as Chloe leans back against the seat, locking the car and throwing her keys in the cup holder instead of in the ignition and then running a hand back through her hair, her eyes never moving from a blank stare straight ahead. "Chloe? I know something's wrong. Please don't shut me out," Beca pushes again, fighting against her own tendency to pull away when someone is upset. She's trying so hard to build a proper communicative relationship.

"I had a fight with Aubrey, and I'm still fucking furious with her. But it's making me feel weird around you too because it's just… absolute fucking bullshit," Chloe responds, and Beca's mind reels at the level of cussing. It's not like Chloe doesn't swear, but she hasn't encountered quite this intensity before.

"Was it about me?" Beca asks, cautiously, and Chloe just sighs, Beca knowing exactly what that means. "Did I do something unreasonable to make her angry, or…"

"Nope. She's just being a bitch, she got mad I was going out with you and the others tonight, shit about first years and some absolute bullshit about you and I know it's bullshit and so does she and there's no way I'm going to repeat it to you," Chloe finally elaborates.

"Oh… That bad?" Beca responds, not sure what else to say.

"Yeah. And it's fucking stupid, she gets like this sometimes, she used to try and be so controlling of my life and I thought she'd got better about it, but she's saying shit about us breaking up or whatever which we both know isn't gonna happen because I fucking love you and I trust that you feel the same, and if it came down to you or her I would choose you every goddamn day but I don't want her to be so idiotic that it comes down to that-" Chloe rambles.

"I don't want you to have to do that either. And, like… she seemed to like me when I was at your place last week. I'm sorry this is happening. I don't know what to suggest," Beca gently cuts her off, leaning against the console to reach over and take Chloe's hands.

"I tried to talk to her calmly but she wasn't listening. I told her to sort her shit out before I got home but I doubt she will have," Chloe sighs, finally looking over and meeting Beca's eyes. "You know what's shitty? After all this, I want to invite you to come and stay at mine tonight, but I know that's a bad idea."

"I would suggest you come to mine, but that'd probably piss her off more if she's mad at you spending time with me?"

"Yeah…" Chloe sighs. "I'm sorry I was kind of grumpy at dinner. You should get back to your place, I'll drive you there."

"It's okay. You're allowed to be angry. And thanks."

The drive to Beca's residence is short and quiet, although not uncomfortably so. Chloe parks in the 15-minute park out the front, turning the car off and unclipping her seatbelt so she can turn slightly to face Beca. It's a message Beca understands easily, having already happened many a time in the month she's been in Australia, so she shifts as far across her seat as she can and leans over, her arms sliding loosely around Chloe's neck as they meet in a kiss that quickly intensifies. It's not the most comfortable position, but climbing over into one seat is near-impossible, so they tolerate it.

"I love you. Thank you for being so sweet and caring to me all the time," Chloe mumbles into Beca's neck when their kiss breaks, Beca feeling slight goosebumps rise across her skin in response as she smiles softly, still holding tightly on to Chloe.

"I love you so much, Chlo. I'm like this because if anything makes you feel shitty I want to do everything I can to help you. And, if Aubrey is still being weird and you want out, please come over," she replies earnestly, "especially since you've got your lips on my neck." Her addition is lighter, joking, and she feels a sense of relief when Chloe laughs lightly.

"Sorry," she whispers, clearly not the slightest bit sorry, before pressing a kiss into the crook of Beca's neck. Her girlfriend takes a deep breath in response, pulling back, and Chloe knows she's trying to look annoyed but it really isn't working.

"Seriously, though, Chlo, if you want to come over, or even if you want me to talk to her or something… please tell me. I want to be on good terms with her," she calms her tone, and Chloe nods.

"Thanks. I'll see how it goes."

When Chloe finally pulls into the garage of her house fifteen minutes later, she spends just as much time sitting in the car after she turns the engine off as she did at Beca's residence, only without any real excuse for doing so. Eventually, sighing, she grabs her bag and leaves the car, making an effort to not try and be cautious or sneaky as she enters through the garage door. It's her house, she has every goddamn right to be here.

"Have fun?" Aubrey's voice greets her almost the second she steps into the living room, and her tone is less than friendly.

"I mean, I was a bit angry, but it was fun otherwise, yeah," Chloe responds, seeing Aubrey roll her eyes in response.

"Angry because I told you the truth?"

"No, Aubrey, and I'm not going to keep debating this with you. We both know everything you said earlier is total bullshit. The only reason I can think of for you doing this is that you're jealous of how much time I spend with Beca, but that's ridiculous anyway because I live with you and I eat more meals with you and spend more time with you than I don't. I'm going to bed," Chloe pushes her response out as clearly and forcefully as necessary to keep Aubrey quiet, leaving the room before her friend has a chance to respond.

* * *

Beca likes her degree, but sometimes she kind of regrets attending particular lectures instead of staying home, particularly this one three days after the dinner with Chloe. Sophia was taking this course, too, and she didn't show up to the lecture today so it was extra boring to sit through. And it was almost as far across campus from her place as it possibly could be, so she was in for a fifteen minute walk back. At least she'd spent the last two hours expecting it.

What she wasn't expecting, of course, was the person she runs into walking past the physics building. Especially given Aubrey doesn't take physics.

"Aubrey," Beca acknowledges, her voice level but not unfriendly, carefully watching the disdain wash over her face.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" Aubrey's response is formulaic, cool, and Beca sighs.

"You know, I want to be on good terms with you, Aubrey, and I thought we were okay, although not close because we've only known each other a few weeks. And I'd usually be worried I did something wrong by Chloe if you were upset with me, because I'd hope you had her best interests at heart and so do I… But she wouldn't tell me what you said, just that she didn't agree with it. I've tried my hardest to make sure she knows that if I do something wrong she should tell me, and I don't profess I'd be a perfect girlfriend anyway because I'm so new to all this openness shit… but I'm really trying," Beca is surprised by the length of her own statement, but she runs with it, spurred on by the uncertainty that has played through her head for the last 48 hours.

"Why on earth would you care what I think? I know you're going to have your fun then break up with her in a few weeks," Aubrey shrugs, and Beca feels her eyes widen.

"What? I'm like… ridiculously in love with Chloe and I'm in this long-term, Aubrey, I thought you knew that."

Aubrey's response is a long stare, before she turns and walks away.

* * *

Chloe has ended up with a shocker of a group for a presentation in one of her courses this semester, and the meeting she had with them on campus drags on so long that she ends up stuck in peak-hour traffic and doesn't get home until close to six, which is just _perfect_ since she's meant to be picking Beca up because they're going to dinner and a comedy show in like forty minutes and she thought she'd have enough time to get ready between getting back from uni and heading back over there…

"I'm going out with Beca tonight," she mentions to Aubrey and Amy as she rushes through the living room to her bedroom, not noticing the loud sigh Aubrey gives in response or the fact that her best friend stands up and follows her towards her room. Indeed, Chloe is halfway through pulling her shirt off when Aubrey steps into the room.

"Um- Chloe?"

"Yeah?" she answers, finishing getting rid of her top but not pausing to look at Aubrey as she turns to her wardrobe to search for a more date-suitable one.

"I talked to Beca today."

"Ok- oh, right. What the fuck did you say to her?" Chloe turns quickly, angry eyes directed straight at Aubrey, who she notes looks surprisingly uncertain.

"Nothing."

"Why would I believe that?" Chloe retorts, and Aubrey sighs.

"She said more than me."

"Yeah? What did she say?"

"Diplomatic stuff about wanting to be okay around me and cheesy stuff about you."

"Sounds like her."

Aubrey doesn't respond for some time, instead shifting over and taking a seat on Chloe's bed, looking down and playing with her fingers, listening as Chloe lets her own attention wander back to changing and looking for her shoes.

"Why do you go out with her so often?" Aubrey's question is softer than Chloe expects.

"Because I like spending time with her."

"Do you not like spending time with me?"

"Nope. I still spend more time with you than her, Aubs. It's just that our time is in our house, we've known each other long enough that we stay in more than we go out. If you want to do something else you can always ask, you know," Chloe responds, knowing this is as close as Aubrey will get to admitting why she was being an ass. Of course she was jealous.

"I guess." Aubrey answers.

"I was gonna ask Beca back here tonight, so can you please not be an ass to her? I've never been shitty when you've had Stacie over," Chloe requests, and Aubrey reluctantly agrees before slipping out of the room.

When Chloe returns to her house with Beca a few hours later, Amy quickly informs her that Aubrey is at Stacie's place. At least, she thinks, it's something.

* * *

Beca leans back in her chair at lunch almost a week later, listening as her friends all collectively enthuse over how much they miss ten-pin bowling and the weird aesthetic of bowling alleys, none of them actually making the obvious point.

"Should we, you know, go bowling then?" she jumps in a few minutes later, and after a quick round of googling about locations and prices, they're all kind of committed to the idea.

"Could do with a few more people to make it cheaper to be honest," CR comments, and it gives Beca an idea.

"You know, I could invite Chloe and her two housemates? Aubrey and Amy? Amy's ridiculous, you'd like her," Beca suggests, not needing to elaborate on Aubrey because of course they know what's been happening.

"Yeah, that'd work," Jess agrees, the others joining her.

Beca takes it upon herself to invite all three of them, creating an awkward group chat to do so and brushing it off when Chloe texts her privately a minute after they all accept. She just wants everything to be peaceful. She hopes this will work.


	8. Bechloe Week 2018 Day 3: Drunk Texting

**A/N:** Day 3 of Bechloe Week 2018 - "Drunk Texting"

Set in Beca's week-before-first-week of uni. Ft. me attempting to write drunk texts as a non-drinker and realising it is _way_ harder than I thought.

* * *

She has to throw herself into her university 'O week' if she wants to make the most of all of this. Even if it's terrifying. Even if she kind of wants to pull back and hide in her room sometimes. Even if she's visibly nervous and probably giving off a "stay away" vibe because of it.

It only takes two days for Beca to land in somewhat of a group of new friends – a little eclectic, but that's not something she minds. It comes in handy when on her third night at Jacaranda Hall, there's a party, and of course there's alcohol because it's a university and it's Australia so everyone's legal. She's legal. She just hasn't done much of this before outside a highly controlled environment where she was surrounded by people older than her. Or, you know, Chloe that one time.

Jess – the first friend she made at the hall – is in the same position as her: like, she's had alcohol a couple of times, but she's never been drunk. Lily, who still creeps Beca out to an extreme degree, mumbles something about fireball whiskey that she guesses means she's not in the same position. Sophia and CR – Beca's still not exactly sure what that stands for – tell them they're used to it, and they'll look after the newbies. Beca bristles a little at being called a newbie, but she doesn't push the fact that she's actually a couple of years older than the others. It's something she's trying to forget for the most part, anyway.

They pre-drink in Sophia's room with alcohol that CR bought, and by the time they get to the party in the common room, Beca is… buzzed, she guesses is the word. Just not too much. Of course, there's a small student-run bar in the hall, so it doesn't stop there. And of course the hall party has a curfew after which they all traipse off campus in towards the city, because when you're doing a night out at uni, it certainly doesn't finish at 11pm. Or so the later year students that are vaguely leading the horde of first years to the right clubs say, anyway.

Beca has never done a shot before, but CR buys her – and Jess – one when they get to their first club for the night, and it kind of sets the tone for what comes after. It's mildly uncomfortable, and alcoholic, but somehow the fact that it is both makes each more palatable.

Wanting to be beside Chloe is not an uncommon feeling for her in the slightest, but Beca makes a mental note that it seems to be exponentially increasing as she drinks, somewhere around when they first move on to a different club along with a group of others – mostly girls, and a few guys that have taken an interest in Lily that Beca would probably be suspicious of were she sober –, however she quickly forgets the "you should probably try and ignore that" second half to her note.

Beca agrees to dance with Jess and CR, being well past the point where she would remember to be embarrassed about the fact that she's kinda shitty at dancing when it's not pre-rehearsed, or at least, she always feels like she is. Not long after they arrive at and continue to dance at their third club for the night, Jess does what she guesses is meant to be a grind in her general direction although mostly looks like nearly falling over, winking at her, and she is aware that Jess is laughing it off afterwards because that's all it was but her mind is too busy wishing it was Chloe. She's pretty sure Chloe could dance. She might've seen Chloe dancing at that one show in Toronto more than she's admitted before.

They take a break, bumbling over to the side of the room and sitting on a table more than at it, a little while later. Beca notices the presence of her phone pressing into her hip from its place in her pocket as she sit down, and pulls it out, spinning it between her hands for a moment. And, hey, it wouldn't hurt to text Chloe, right? Just a simple "I miss you and I wish you were out with us"?

* * *

Chloe didn't exactly have the dorm group first night out in Sydney experience in her first year, having been living off campus with Amy and Aubrey even then, but she still had a fairly active orientation week. Okay, so she went out for five nights straight and was blind-drunk at least three of those. She knows what it's like, so on the night that Beca is having her first night out at uni, Chloe decides she should try and catch up on The Good Place, because she kind of liked the first season and hasn't got around to watching the second yet.

She's only got one and a half episodes left when her phone goes off at 1:30am, and she intends to completely ignore it in favour of finishing the show until she remembers why she's up so late in the first place, reluctantly pausing Netflix as she reaches across to the side of her desk, where she left her phone.

" _I mbiss yoi..,.. u sgould be herrrer_ " Beca's text reads, and Chloe can't help but let out a puff of air in amusement. She'd laugh, but can't make any noise because the walls here are thin, as proven many a time by Aubrey and her girlfriend.

" _I miss you too... and I'm sober_ x" she replies, quickly hitting play again on Netflix because she has no idea if she'll get a response.

Beca knows that Chloe is implying she's only texting her because she's drunk, which she is pretty certain proves that she's totally not. She still gets implication! And okay, her phone screen is kinda blurry and she's having to squint a little to read it but the lights in here are super strobe-y. So, of course, Beca has to tell Chloe - eventually, after she's thrown back another round of shots this time courtesy of one of the guys following Lily around - that she's not drunk, she just misses her girlfriend.

" _Mm nit drunk... I jusst love u_ " Beca's reply reads, Chloe only opening it a couple minutes after her phone vibrates beside her, forcing herself to finish this one episode before she closes her laptop and shifts over to her bed to devote her full attention to Beca.

" _You're definitely drunk texting me but that's okay, I like it, it's cute_ " Chloe answers, honestly, biting her lip as the three dots to indicate Beca is typing appear almost as soon as she sends it.

Lily and her boys have disappeared again, as has CR, but Beca, Jess and Sophia are still sitting on the table. Beca is vaguely aware of the other two talking beside her but her mind is fixed on the phone in her hands. Or, more accurately, how much she wishes Chloe was here beside her and not just texting her on her phone. Whenever she glances up she can see people dancing on each other, couples making out, hands clinging to the edges of clothes and slipping under them. She just wants... that. She wants intimacy. From Chloe. So she should tell her, right?

" _I like u_ " Beca's first reply is short, and Chloe doesn't immediately reply herself, knowing there'll be more to come.

" _I like beingg wirh you..._ "

" _I wannna touch you_ "

" _Is that cute you want to hold me or sexy you want to touch me?_ " Chloe's reply is to the point, because part of her knew that this might happen. Hell, she'd not be wearing this particular shirt and approximately matching bra to binge watch TV if she wasn't prepared for this. She'd be in her pyjamas... and she might've taken her makeup off instead of touching it up and darkening her lip colour.

" _Both_ " Beca's reply is short, and surprisingly coherent, although it takes longer than four letters should. Long enough for Chloe to switch over to her phone's camera, pull her top down a little with two fingers hooked under the neck and experiment with a couple of selfies trying to show off a little more than enough cleavage.

She sends the best through in response to Beca's latest message, no caption, and part of her a little apprehensive at what the response will be.

Beca feels her heart rate quicken when she opens the picture Chloe has sent, swallowing nervously as she glances to her side to make sure no one else saw it. She should close it, but she kind of doesn't want to. Chloe is so gorgeous...

" _Yourrr beaytifal_ " Beca's reply is surprisingly sweet, and Chloe worries that she's read the situation wrong, although only for a moment, until the next message arrives. " _I thingk i'mba sex drumk... justs for u_ "

" _You should have fun with your friends not text me x_ " Chloe experiments a little, again, with her next reply (although it's not a lie that she feels a little guilty for entertaining Beca's messages for so long).

" _you shsould come rehe so i can do bodth..,.. an codme home wipth me so i cacn do hyou_ "  
Chloe is impressed with Beca's line, to be honest, even if the execution is… messy.

" _Where are you?_ " She responds, entertaining the idea. It would be ridiculous, she can't drink because she'd have to drive, it's definitely all first year uni kids out tonight, but... drunk, clumsy-typing Beca is persuasive without trying.

Beca has to double check the name of the club with Sophia, before putting an excruciating amount of effort into spelling it correctly - she hopes - to reply to Chloe. She reluctantly lets the others drag her back out into the middle of the room not long later, though, before she can see if Chloe replied. She's itching to pull her phone out of her pocket and check, because the music is vibrating the room too much to make it possible to feel it going off in her pocket, but the room is packed too tightly for her to pull her phone out anyway, especially in her current state, so she can't.

Chloe knows the club that Beca names. It's fairly close to the campus, so when Chloe makes up her mind and quickly freshens up her appearance before she jumps in her car, she drives to and parks at Beca's residence. She walks the few minutes back in towards the city, smiling to herself at the masses of students so obviously on their first real night out that she encounters on the way. The bouncer eyes her over suspiciously at the door, clearly noticing her sober state.

"Request for company from a very drunk first year friend," she explains, flashing her ID, and his expression softens as he nods and waves her in.

The club is loud, sweaty, and the lights make everything look just a little bit fake, and it immediately reminds Chloe of why she always tries to pre-drink before she goes anywhere like this. A cursory glance of the crowd shows no evidence of Beca or any of her friends - not that Chloe would probably be able to recognise them anyway, having not met them yet - so Chloe moves around to the side of the room, vaguely in the direction of the bar. She is about to text Beca when she notices her, messily dancing along with some other girls not far into the crowd. She pushes her hair over to one side in the process of moving, loose curls shifting across her back, and Chloe's breath hitches as she starts to try and navigate her way into the crowd.

"Beca," she hears someone say her name, the voice immediately recognisable, although she thinks she might be mistaken until she turns around to the source of the voice and finds it is indeed her girlfriend. Of course, to Beca, the next logical step is to wrap her arms around her and pull her as close as possible. And, she hopes, never let go.

"Chloeee!" Beca's voice is excited, a little slurred, but it's still makes Chloe feel incredibly warm, although that could also be the fact she's now squished in a very tight hug while also in a tightly packed club.

"I'm way too sober to be here but you're very persuasive," Chloe tells Beca, lips brushing against her ear to try and be close enough to be heard over the music. Beca shivers in response, slurring something about fixing things as she moves, leading Chloe out of the crowd but, somehow, managing to lean against her for stability as she does.

"Let me buy you a drink," Beca's voice seems clearer, somehow, once they have a little more space around them, although there is still none between them.

"You still got money on you?" Chloe teases, but Beca just flips open her phone case and pulls out her card in response, leading Chloe up to the bar.

She doesn't get anywhere near as far gone as Beca was when she got there, but she manages enough that she doesn't feel too strange to be in the venue. They don't stay long, anyway, Beca's friends deciding not long later to return to their residence. Beca and Chloe walk a few paces behind them, not alone but far enough away to be in their own little bubble. Chloe would probably find it annoying, were anyone else leaning on her as Beca is, but being her it seems almost endearing.

Beca and Chloe stand in the courtyard between buildings of the residence with the others for a few minutes, but as much as Chloe wants to be friends with Beca's friends, they both want to be elsewhere now. As the conversation lulls, not too long after their arrival, Chloe feels Beca tugging on her hand before they both say goodnight to the rest of the group. Chloe has been at Jacaranda Hall before – a kind-of friend in one of her first year courses was a resident – but not with Beca, so she lets Beca lead her over to the main building and messily up a staircase to the first floor. Her room is modest, but Chloe doesn't spend much time examining it.

* * *

"How are you feeling?" Chloe whispers when she feels Beca stirring against her early the next morning. It's easy to feel her girlfriend's even slight movements, limbs wrapped tightly around each other in the small single bed.

"Hmph," is Beca's only reply as she tries to shift around to face Chloe, Chloe's body reacting as she does. "I'm somehow not surprised you're here."

"I mean, you did text me," Chloe laughs lightly, feeling no effects of the small amount she drank last night but trying to minimise her volume in case Beca is.

"I don't remember that…" Beca scrunches up her face slightly, "nope. I remember you walking back here with me but that's about it. Also, not hungover. Maybe still drunk."

"That wouldn't surprise me. Want to get out of bed?"

"No. You're naked and cuddling me, why would I want to move?" Beca pauses, "oh, yeah, I'm still drunk."

"You're ridiculously cute," Chloe feels her cheeks tinge with red, watching as Beca's do much the same before she is shifting again, settling with her head resting just below her shoulder, hands tracing delicate patterns across her abdomen. Chloe could live with staying here a little longer, too.


	9. Bechloe Week 2018 Day 4: Why?

**A/N: Bechloe Week 2018 Day 4: "Why"**

Set during the same trip to California as Day 1, two years after Beca moves to Australia/just after Chloe graduates.

* * *

Chloe takes fairly long showers – it's kind of hard to avoid, given how much attention her hair requires to stay under control, according to what she's told Beca – and it's pretty much the only time when they're staying with Beca's Mum that they aren't together. So, a couple of days after Christmas when Chloe decides to go and wash her hair one evening, Beca corners her Mum in the kitchen and mumbles at her about wanting to talk about something.

"What is it?" she answers, raising an eyebrow in surprise. Beca has been noticeably more into sharing things with her Mum since Chloe came around, but it's still rare.

"Chloe… like, positive stuff, but…" Beca trails off, trying to gather her thoughts, "I was with Jesse for four years and never wanted to even consider like, moving in with him or sex or marriage or futures or anything like that, because like, we were kids and I only really liked him platonically, but also it always felt too soon…"

"You're not going to try and tell me you've never slept with Chloe, are you? Your brother was pretty sure you did when you first met her," her Mum teases, and Beca feels her cheeks flush bright red.

"Muuum… I'm not discussing that with you. I shouldn't have mentioned that, it was only relevant about Jesse because I somehow dated a teenage boy for four years and nothing happened."

"The rest of it, then? You're freaking out because you think about it all with Chloe?" her Mum relents, letting the topic drop, and Beca shrugs.

"Something like that… I started thinking about things like that ages ago, to be honest. Way too early in our relationship, probably… but I do want that, I want to move in with her like, now, to be honest, and I want to marry her sometime in the future and not like way off in the distant future, but… I feel like I shouldn't be thinking that yet," Beca explains, rubbing a hand absentmindedly across her temple as she looks down at the kitchen bench.

"Why shouldn't you be?" her Mum questions, walking around the bench to pull out one of the bench stools and take a seat beside where Beca is standing.

"I don't know… we've only been together for two years, and I guess we're still too young or something?" Beca answers.

"You're 22, Bec, she's 23. You're not really that young to be thinking about those kind of things… I'm sure you know heaps of people you went to school with are married with kids already. And it's not like two years is no time."

"I feel like the fact I'm still in uni kind of… messes with my perception of whether I'm an adult yet," Beca shrugs, and her Mum nods, knowing she hasn't finished. "I wouldn't want to get married before I graduate."

"You'll probably graduate in a year's time, though," her Mum points out, and Beca nods, although not saying anything further. "Have you talked to Chloe about it?"

Chloe hears her name leave Sarah's mouth as she's walking back towards where she left Beca and her Mum in the kitchen, and she pauses, wondering if this is a conversation she's not meant to hear.

"Not really… I made a joke about it a little while ago," she hears Beca say, her tone tense, and Chloe starts to feel guilty for eavesdropping, but she can't make herself walk away. "You know I'm looking at visa stuff to stay there, yeah?"

Sarah makes an agreeing noise, and Chloe suddenly realises what Beca is talking about, feeling her heart squeeze in some combination of excitement and discomfort.

"I could probably get a partner visa even if we weren't married but… I joked to her that we should get married so I could definitely get one… She just kind of laughed it off, so I don't know." Chloe feels her heart sink at Beca's tone. She only laughed it off because she thought she was joking.

"You were just joking, though. What's to say Chloe didn't do that because she's hesitant to bring it up too?" Sarah comments, and Chloe wonders for a split second if Beca's Mum can somehow read her mind.

"I don't know… I just feel like if she wanted it she might've said something? She's more like that than me… Like, neither of us is totally sure where we're living next year and I really just want to ask her if we should live together maybe but I feel like she would've asked me by now if she wanted to?" Beca answers, and Chloe decides she's heard more than enough of a conversation that she really shouldn't have heard any of, and quietly tiptoes back towards the bathroom.

"There's no reason she should ask over you, Beca," her Mum points out, and Beca nods. "Maybe the only reason she hasn't is because she's worried about the same things you are. You really need to talk to her… there's nothing wrong with wanting to."

"I guess… I'll talk to her sometime," Beca relents, with a shrug. They both hear the bathroom door creak open and then close kind of loudly, and Beca quickly moves across to the table and grabs a music magazine she had been looking at earlier, her mother raising her eyebrows before shrugging and shifting back around into the kitchen, starting to pull things out of the pantry to make dinner.

"Hey Chlo," Beca greets her girlfriend when she enters the room a moment later, a slight edge to her tone that Chloe notices but decides not to pick up on just now.

"Hey baby," Chloe answers, trying to keep her own tone normal as she wanders over and takes the seat beside Beca, "whatcha reading?"

Chloe tries not to think about what she overheard that night, or the next day, or those after that, but a mixture of guilt and worry and curiosity is constantly eating away at her as she notices Beca becoming just that little bit more awkward in some of their interactions, and increasingly affectionate in others, as if her girlfriend is trying to build herself up to say something but keeps freaking out and pulling back. For her own part, she tries to be as affectionate as she can, but she doesn't think Beca notices any difference.

It's late on the day before New Years' Eve when Chloe decides to say something. They've been lying in bed for half an hour, Beca's hand still entwined with hers while she lies on her back and stares at the ceiling, clearly trying to think over something. Chloe kind of hates that Beca's being closed off again. So, she shifts onto her side and over to Beca, entwining their legs and cuddling up close to her girlfriend.

"I'm sorry, Beca," she starts, feeling her go to protest the apology and quickly continuing, "I heard a bit of what you were talking about with your Mum the other day, just from when she asked if you'd talked to me about it."

Beca sighs in response, trying to sink down into the bed somehow, terrified of what is coming.

"Your Mum was right. I laughed it off because I was scared that you'd freak out if I admitted I wanted that. But… I love you so much, and I think about that a lot. I want to marry you someday, and part of me is scared we're too young or we haven't been together long enough to talk about it, and I definitely feel like we should wait until you've graduated, but honestly I'd quite happily marry you, like… next week. Except I want a fancy ass wedding, so we'd need time to plan."

"Of course you want a fancy wedding," Beca grins, relaxing in Chloe's embrace, trying to hide how completely relieved she is that her spiralling worry was for nothing. "I'm scared about exactly the same things. But it's good to know that we're on the same page, because sometimes I just want to say sappy things to you about our future but calling it our future is kind of… scary."

"Please never turn down the sap for me, I don't know how many times I have to remind you I love it," Chloe jokes, and Beca just shakes her head, before she turns serious. "Realistically, Becs, it is our future. I'm not going anywhere and I know you aren't either, and if I'm being totally honest… I started thinking about all this stuff really early on. When you first visited my parents with me, in your first year."

"I started thinking about it then too," Beca admits, before turning slightly and pulling Chloe into a kiss that they don't pull back from for some time, until Chloe does rather abruptly, remembering there was something more she wanted to say.

"Do you want to move in with me this year? I'd like you to. I want to be able to sleep beside you every night, and to just… live with you. Especially since I'll be working full time and not able to hang out with you at uni as much as I want to. I've been meaning to ask you for a while, I just… kept putting it off," she admits, and she can feel Beca pulling closer to her in response.

"I'd like that. Why'd you only ask now?"

"I wasn't sure if you were planning on sharehousing with some of your Hall friends and I didn't want to take that away from you, and I don't know, I've kind of put off thinking about moving out of my place until we get back…"

"I'm sorry I like planning ahead so much."

"Don't apologise. You wouldn't like it in a sharehouse, though." Chloe grins, and Beca rolls her eyes playfully, knowing Chloe well enough that she could finish her sentence. "You'll like living with me."

"I already know I do," Beca answers, softly, shifting around until she is lying half on top of her and can nuzzle her head against Chloe's shoulder. "You're the best pillow…"

"You're the best blanket," Chloe responds, softly, entwining their hands again as she brings her arms around Beca, her thumb drawing shapes across the back of her girlfriend's hand as they lie content in each other's company.


	10. Bechloe Week 2018 Day 5: Road Trip

**A/N: Day 5 of Bechloe Week 2018 - Road Trip**

Set in April-ish of Beca's second year in Australia, ft. unnecessary fixation on Australian town names that very few readers will know of because I needed it to make geographic sense in my head.

* * *

"I miss proper beachside places," Beca muses, sitting at a café with Chloe across from Bondi Beach, "like, Sydney beaches aren't super different to LA beaches… but cutesy little towns along the coast, I guess kind of like Wollongong but smaller. I used to go to some of them down towards San Diego a fair bit."

"Are you planning on doing much in the April break this year?" Chloe asks, in response, and Beca just shrugs. "Want to do a road trip down to the south coast or Byron or something?"

"That sounds fun. Sure. How far away are they?"

As nice as Byron sounds, they decide they want an actual road trip, not a flight, and driving to Byron would be close to nine hours. Instead, they decide to head south – to Batemans Bay – for a nice 4-hour drive along the coast. Chloe drives – Beca has an international license, sure, but she still feels weird about the whole left side of the road thing – and Beca settles into the passenger seat, content to switch between watching the quite amazing scenery they drive past and her equally amazing girlfriend.

Of course, it's mid-morning when they set off, so their first forty minutes is spent dealing with Sydney traffic, and Chloe mostly grumbles about how they should've tried to leave on a weekend, not that it'd be too much better anyway, while Beca flicks through her girlfriend's music to find something to play. She settles on an artist she's never heard of, causing Chloe to quickly glance over.

"You know Birds of Tokyo?"

"Nope. Are they good?"

"It's open for debate. I like them," Chloe shrugs, before turning her attention back to the road, and Beca simply leans back and listens until they've got out of the hectic city traffic.

"I can't work out how I feel about them, to be honest," Beca breaks their comfortable silence once they are finally cruising along the coastal highway (although, at this point, it's still heading through bushland towards the coast and not along it).

"I've never understood why they're so divisive, but like, Aubrey absolutely detests them… and I'm not as much of a fan of their more recent stuff, I don't think. But hey, I'm open to whatever," Chloe answers.

"Can I change it? I want to see what else you have," she is already thumbing through the artists on her phone when she asks.

"Go for it, just don't do the changing halfway through a track thing."

"God, I hate people that do that… ooh, Broods, I've heard of them!"

"Really? Aren't they Kiwis or something?"

"Yeah, but Dylan knew someone that knew one of them I think? I don't know, he introduced me to their music… I like Never Gonna Change, have that?"

"Yup," Chloe's response is unnecessary, of course, the song starting to play halfway through it. Beca turns quiet for a moment, but soon she is softly singing along under her breath, and Chloe can't help but glance over and smile.

They aren't doing the drive straight through – that would be silly, they're driving past so many great places – and their first stop is a lighthouse lookout. Chloe conveniently forgets to tell her slightly more exercise-averse girlfriend that it's a kilometre's hike from the car park, but hey. She can deal with a little bit of walking for the prettiness.

"Wait, Chloe, you didn't say there was hiking involved!" Beca complains, when she sees the distance marker at the trail.

"Oops?" her response is laced with sarcasm.

"You're lucky you're cute," she huffs, Chloe laughing off her response and nudging her shoulder as they start to walk.

Beca's complaints dwindle not long into the walk, of course, because it's a smooth trail and there's enough subtle glimpses of crystal-blue ocean that she forgets to care about the distance. Also, there's that whole thing where she hates everything a little less if she's doing it with Chloe, but she tries to push away that cheesy thought for another time.

She tries to resist taking photos, something about not wanting to be that person, but she relents when they reach the end of the trail and it opens out into a grassy expanse and a very traditional lighthouse out on the headland they'd finally arrived at the edge of. It was kind of gorgeous, and she couldn't not pull out her phone as she wandered around, trying to get the best angle to capture everything. She thinks she's got it, too, until she looks to her side and realises there's a little cove in to one side of the headland and it's such a perfect scene of turquoise water crashing against red rocks and running up white sand that she has a strange urge to just… jump in there. She takes photos instead – she'll leave the swimming for their destination – before putting her phone away, standing and watching the waves in silence, until Chloe appears beside her.

"Worth it?"

"Yeah."

When they return to Chloe's car and get back on the highway, Beca quickly returns to flicking through Chloe's music. Before long, though, she puts shuffle on and sits Chloe's phone back in the cup holder between them, instead turning her attention to Chloe as they fall into comfortable conversation.

Chloe, surprisingly, notices when a Seven Keys song appears before Beca does, quickly reaching over to skip it, Beca putting her hand in the way before she can.

"Still have my music?" Beca teases, regretting letting it continue to play as soon as she hears herself start singing.

"I didn't stop liking it just because I started dating you," Chloe shrugs, hands back on the steering wheel. "Sometimes it does feel weird to listen to, though."

"Look, yeah, it's weird for me," Beca admits, skipping the song herself. "Do you still have Chloe? Did you ever download that?"

"Yeah. Sometimes I'm in a sappy mood and I just want to remember you actually did that," she affirms, "I kind of love that you wrote a song about me and I'll probably never not love it."

"I still kinda can't believe I did… But at the same time I totally can. You're easy to write songs about."

"Why easy? Also, songs? Not just one?"

"Because I love you and I think everything about you is just… nice. I could probably come up with something right now about how the ocean back there was my favourite colour because it's the same colour as your eyes… jesus christ that was cheesy"

"It was incredibly cheesy," Chloe grins, although her eyes stay on the road as she indicates out into the right lane to overtake a logging truck. "You didn't answer me, though. Multiple songs? Is this a regular thing?"

"…yeah," Beca answers, her tone quiet, feeling herself blush. "It kind of sucks that I only met you after I was no longer contractually obligated to be inspired to write songs because you're kind of the best inspiration ever and I've not like, fully formed anything else since I came over here, but I have… notes. Of a couple of things. One of them might have a stable melody."

"Stable?"

"As in, sometimes when I think of lyrics first the melody changes a few times before I settle on it, but that one is settled."

"So… if it has lyrics and a settled melody…"

"Are you about to ask me to sing it for you?" Beca kind of wants to sink into her seat in embarrassment, but to her surprise, Chloe shakes her head.

"I'm not going to ask you to. I'm just saying, if you ever wanted to express something you've put in a song because you're embracing how sappy you are instead of hiding it, I'd kind of love it and you don't need to be scared that I wouldn't."

"I'll keep that in mind," Beca tries to move the conversation on, but glancing over and seeing the soft smile on Chloe's face, she changes her mind. "I've wanted to tell you about some of them for a while but sometimes I scare myself into thinking I'm being too sappy around you and… yeah."

"I'm a sucker for you being sappy, there's no such thing as too much."

"For what it's worth… same."

"Oh, I know you love it, baby," Chloe grins, turning into a side road, "you'll also love this stop, the walk is incredibly short and there might be kangaroos."

"Awesome," Beca enthuses. There's no one else parked at this lookout, so when they step out of the car, Beca quickly pulls Chloe into a firm kiss before they reluctantly separate and start walking the short distance out to this beach.

Chloe's phone's shuffle is either being nice to her or teasing her, and Beca can't decide which, when it plays 'Chloe' not long after they return to the car, now slightly over halfway to their destination. Part of her wants to skip it, too, but before she can do so she changes her mind and throws a mischievous grin at Chloe, turning it up slightly and starting to sing along with herself. Chloe laughs a little in response, before joining in after the first chorus. Both girls quietly thinking to themselves that they sound kind of good together, they don't stop after one song.

* * *

It's late afternoon when they arrive in Bateman's Bay and check in to the cute little hotel-apartment they had booked to stay at for the week that feels less like a hotel and more like a beach house, albeit on the second level of a 3-storey building. They have a little kitchen – stocked with cookware and, they are surprised to find, basic pantry staples – and decide to eat in, but Beca elects to stay at the apartment while Chloe goes out to grab something to cook for dinner.

Once Chloe leaves, Beca grabs the only paper she can find – a notepad branded with the hotel's logo – and the pen sitting beside it and starts scribbling things down. She has to do this, when she's trying to write a song. Things don't flow quite as well when she's staring at a blinking cursor on a screen than when she can twirl a pen around, trying to draw syllable patterns and melodies in the air in front of her.

She's pulled something together by the time Chloe gets back (although it's short and lacks a chorus because she only had forty minutes), many pages of scribbles and crossed-out lines past and folded back, a relatively clean one now in front of her. She hides the notepad in her bag, though, when she hears her coming, wanting to leave it just for now.

Chloe decided on salmon for dinner – they were by the ocean, after all, so it had to be fish – and a little citrus glaze, foil-baked, because washing up pans after frying fish was not something either of them wanted to spend tonight doing. While it cooks, they flick through some local guidebooks she picked up while she was out trying to work out exactly how they want to spend the next week, besides on the beach that they can very much hear, although not see, from their hotel. It was unseasonably warm for April in this area so swimming was definitely on the cards, but Beca was starting to come around to the idea of more hiking, too.

After dinner Beca insists on cleaning up, shooing Chloe over to the little living area where she shrugs and takes a seat on the couch, continuing to look through guidebooks. The dishes don't take long, and while Chloe is still distracted after they're washed and drying Beca sneaks into the bedroom and pulls out the notepad, flipping back to her most recent page, reading over it and feeling some kind of melody start to come together in her head as she does. Unable to resist, she quickly jots down something which vaguely captures it in the margins, before wandering back out and sitting beside Chloe on the couch.

"I started writing the song I mentioned earlier," Beca says, handing the notepad over to Chloe when she looks up at her. "Just two verses, so far, but I only spent the time you were out on it so I'm kind of coming up with more now anyway…"

"Is this the 40 minutes of work?" Chloe asks, lifting the earlier pages of the notepad from behind it, although not making any move to look at them.

"Yeah, you can look if you want," she answers, and Chloe just does that, eyes focussed carefully on all Beca's rushed markings as she slowly flips through the pages. Beca prefers to write on paper, sure, but the image suddenly brings something to her mind and she reaches for her phone and the notes app, typing it out as quickly as she can before it disappears.

"Is that more?" Chloe looks up from the pages, towards Beca, and she nods.

"Chorus, and a little bit of a half-verse to tie it off at the end…"

"Want your notepad back to keep working on it?"

Beca doesn't audibly respond, but she gives a guilty smile, and Chloe quickly hands it over, watching as Beca shifts to give herself more space and flips to the next new page. Words are scribbled down quickly, but then Chloe watches as Beca's hand starts to move as if conducting instruments through the song, her pen twirling around between her fingers as she does.

She starts singing under her breath – more just sounds than actual words – not long later, and it causes Chloe to quickly move into the bedroom, returning a few seconds later with Beca's laptop and sitting it in front of her. She figures that, if she's going to keep going, she might be wanting it soon anyway and the quick thanks she gets indicates she was right.

Chloe could keep looking back over her guidebooks, but it's honestly more interesting to watch Beca. It's as if her mind is pouring out into the world, all of her thoughts not hidden inside but expressed through flicks of a pen and, now, key clicks on her laptop, her soft singing starting to sound a bit more like the words that Chloe read on the notepad what is probably now fifteen minutes ago.

Beca can feel Chloe watching her and it'd be messing with her process if it was anyone else, but with Chloe it really isn't. It feels kind of nice to share this, to let Chloe see her brain frantically throwing elements together. She really wishes she could think this quickly and creatively in literally any other context, but at least she has it here. She's starting to get a little stuck, though, on how the chorus should sound. She's got the pacing, but notes and variation? No idea.

"Hey, you've heard me singing the verses, yeah?" Beca turns to Chloe, having an idea slightly different to the one she wanted to have.

"Yeah…?" Chloe's answer is curious.

"And you can read sheet music? I mean, it's not noted, just pacing," Beca explains, shifting her laptop slightly to show Chloe the screen.

"Yeah, I know what you're doing there," she confirms, her confusion growing.

"Looking at that, and the words, is anything playing in your head of how it should sound? Like, note variation wise, not necessarily exact pitch?" she asks, Chloe tilting her head for a minute for a while, before nodding. "Could you sing it for me?"

She raises an eyebrow, initially a little unsure. She doesn't usually sing things she's made up – sometimes she makes up silly lyrics about whatever she's doing, but she usually sings them to the tune of something she already knows – so this is new. Beca looks encouraging, though, so Chloe – softly, at least – sings what she figures would be the chorus, as it plays in her head. Beca nods along, scribbling down on her notepad again, coming in with the second verse when Chloe finishes singing as she taps away at her keyboard again.

She gestures for Chloe to sing it again, and she does, although she feels it change a bit from the first time she sang it and she worries a little until she glances over and sees a smile break through Beca's concentrating face, tabbing into another screen in her laptop and modifying something to match Chloe's change.

"That second one did flow a little better from the verses, actually, that was a good change," Beca comments when she's finished, still playing around with things Chloe can't quite understand on her laptop for a minute, before she stops, moving the laptop off her lap and resting it on the table in front of her. "So, you just helped me write a song about you."

"I mean, you'd kind of already-"

"Nope. I had the lyrics, but if it doesn't have a melody and a tune it's a poem, not a song," she quickly cuts her off, and Chloe just shrugs. "It'd take me a while to add instruments or anything like that, so I won't touch that tonight, but usually at this point I'd run through it in full…"

Chloe simply smiles in expectant anticipation, and Beca laughs lightly before turning back to her laptop and scrolling up to the top of the page. Chloe reads along the notations on Beca's screen as she sings, and it's kind of amazing when she transitions into the first chorus and suddenly something that Chloe made up in her own mind is part of something that sounds like an actual song.

"Are you happy with it?" Chloe asks, when Beca finishes, trying not to react herself.

"I think so, I think the last bit might change depending on how I add backing to it… if I do go further with this one," she answers, "did you like it?"

"Yeah. I think everything that has happened since you handed me that notepad is… insanely cool, you're still very talented, and I love your voice."

"Thanks," Beca's response is a little awkward, but she soon shifts the notepad and her laptop further down the couch so she can lean against Chloe's side, gesturing towards all the guidebooks sitting on the table. "So, have we worked out what we might do tomorrow?"

* * *

 **A/N 2:** also ft. likely inaccurate depictions of songwriting process but that would've been a lowkey spoiler if I put it up the top


	11. Bechloe Week 2018 Day 6: Good Luck Charm

**A/N Day 6 of Bechloe Week 2018: Good Luck Charm**

ft literal prompt interpretation. Set near the end of Beca's first year in Australia.

* * *

"What's up, baby?" Chloe asks, watching as Beca flips back and forth between two pages in her textbook. It was Chloe's idea for Beca to come and study at her dining table while Amy was out of town because she was lucky enough to not have any exams this semester. Beca had happily agreed, but she'd appeared frazzled since arriving.

"I have so much to memorise and my exam is three days away and I swear it's impossible and I'm gonna fail!" Beca exclaims, eyes never leaving the page she's now settled on.

"You won't fail. You're good at this stuff, and you've done really well on assessments so far," Chloe reassures her, twiddling her own pen between her fingers. She's got one exam left, too, but it's relatively easy and not for a week. She's not worried.

Beca nods, accepting Chloe's words, but her eyes remain frantic and shoulders tensed as she hunches closer to the book, as if hoping she might absorb its contents through proximity. It confuses Chloe, because Beca hasn't seemed particularly stressed at any point before in this semester, and she didn't stress about her exams in her first semester either.

"We're going to take a lunch break," Chloe says, after another few moments of watching her.

"But I've got so much to do-" Beca goes to protest, quickly cut off.

"And you're too stressy right now to take anything in. Come on, babe, a break will make you work better after it."

Reluctantly, Beca agrees, standing from her chair and stretching as she follows Chloe over to the kitchen and leans against the bench. Chloe pulls a few things out of the fridge for her own lunch, asking what she wants as she goes. She lets out a deep sigh, trying to push studying out of her mind and focussing on the contents of the fridge instead.

Being domestic with Chloe made her feel a lot of things, all of them good, so she leans into the atmosphere as she requests some spinach and capsicum because she does a kinda Mediterranean-inspired toasted sandwich and Chloe's is a little more fresh than hers. She lightly bumps Chloe out of the way of the cutting board with her hip and pulls out a knife and cuts enough tomato for both of them, moving it over towards Chloe so she can make her sandwich before she moves on to her own capsicum.

Chloe finishes putting together her sandwich, turning across towards the sandwich press on the other side of the kitchen behind them, cursing under her breath as she does.

"Hmm?" Beca questions.

"Forgot to preheat it."

"Does it matter?"

"I mean, it tends to melt cheese into the gaps between the pineapple better if it's been preheated."

"You and your weird warm pineapple sandwiches."

Beca quits complaining, however, when she hears the sandwich press flicked on and then quickly feels Chloe stand behind her, an arm wrapping loosely around her stomach as she continues to assemble her own lunch, tight enough to be comforting but not enough to restrict her.

"Feeling calmer?"

"With you there? Definitely."

* * *

Beca doesn't stress quite as much after they eat lunch, although Chloe can still see panic wash across her face at regular intervals, and she's really not sure what she can do about it, other than keep sitting beside her encouraging her to study, just do it… calmly.

She drops Beca back off at her place in the late afternoon, knowing she's having a study session with a couple of people that do the same course, and needing to drive that way anyway to pick up some things from the supermarket a bit further away from her own house. The fresh things at this other supermarket just seem to last longer, and Chloe doesn't like having to waste vegetables.

Beca's earlier stress is still weighing on her mind as she wanders through the supermarket picking up her vegetables. It was out of character and it kind of worries her, because Beca's grouchiness comes around occasionally but only usually that significantly over something suitably worthy of that much grouch, and an exam didn't seem to fit into that. She was glad her forced break and lunch-prep cuddle had helped, but she couldn't do that all the time and Beca certainly couldn't take her into the exam. That'd be weird.

She wanders slowly through the shopping centre back towards her car after she pays for her groceries, not wanting to put in the effort to fight the slow movement of all the people around her also grabbing last-minute shopping on a Friday afternoon. It doesn't help that there's a bunch of mini stalls set up across the centre of the walkway, holding up traffic. She tries to support independent artists but sometimes these things are frustrating, and the one she's ambling past at the moment is just people trying to sell phone plans so she's perfectly happy laying blame on them.

Chloe pauses, however, at the next stall, shifting out of the flow of people and peering across all the things they're selling. It's a bit of an impulse purchase, but it ends up only being $30 and it _could_ end up being worth way more than that, so she buys the delicate silver bracelet and grabs a couple of cheesy-as-hell charms – a B, a C, a heart – and hands over the cash she'd got out at the supermarket that she was meant to use to pay Aubrey back for a brunch the other week. She can just bank transfer her instead.

* * *

Beca invites Chloe to her place the morning of the day before the exam, and Chloe cancels on Aubrey to go but she assumes Beca wouldn't have invited her if she wasn't getting crazy stressed again, although she didn't mention it when she asked. Chloe is right, of course, finding Beca in a sleep-deprived, zombified state hunched over the same textbook she had been a few days earlier.

"When did you last sleep?" Chloe asks, softly, dropping her bag against Beca's closet and moving to stand beside her, a hand gently resting on her shoulder.

"Last night," Beca mumbles, Chloe raising an eyebrow in disbelief.

"For how long?"

"I dunno, an hour?"

"When did you last sleep eight hours?"

"Day before I was at your place…" Beca trails off, knowing Chloe's about to get angry at her for it. She just needed to learn so much shit, though, that she didn't have time for sleep.

"You're not helping yourself, Becs," Chloe tells her, softly, the lack of aggressiveness surprising Beca in her defensive and overtired state. "Are you awake enough to study properly today?"

"I think so. I just need music on."

"Okay, we're gonna put some music on and study until lunch. I'm gonna nap with you after lunch, and tonight we're going to get a full night of sleep. My place or here, I don't care which, but I'm making you sleep a full night."

"Okay," Beca sighs, not feeling the need to fight the plan.

They settle into a quiet peace, Beca drawing diagrams from her book out onto notes she'll take into the exam, gradually feeling more comfortable about the whole thing, while Chloe sits on her bed behind her and writes a couple of applications for part-time jobs, Chloe's music playing from her laptop so the sound is behind Beca instead of in front of her, which she claims distracts her less.

They decide to stay at Beca's overnight, and she tries to fight back against Chloe's insistence that they go to bed at 10pm but she knows she'll fall asleep the second her head hits the pillow, and she's right. Chloe isn't even in bed yet and Beca is asleep.

Indeed, Chloe stays out of the bed for some time after Beca falls asleep, tidying up the mess that has grown around the room over the last few days and drawing a careful heart on the corner of a discarded set of notes, placing the bracelet she bought the other day on top of it inside Beca's drawer that she knows she'll need to open before her exam to get her student ID.

Her tasks completed, she changes into some of Beca's spare pyjamas and gently pulls back the cover to slide into the bed beside her girlfriend. She need not worry about disturbing her, of course, she's dead to the world.

* * *

Beca wakes up at 7am, quickly realising by the fingers calmly running up and down her arm that Chloe is already awake behind her.

"Decent sleep?" she asks, softly, as Beca turns to face her.

"Yeah. Thanks."

"No problem, Becs. Stress just got the better of you, and you needed to deal with it more than anything else. Everything is going to be absolutely fine today, and then you'll be done for this year," she reassures her, as Beca curls back up against her.

"Almost done," she mumbles, against her chest.

Chloe leaves Beca's not long after they wake, reminding her as she leaves not to forget her student ID in the top drawer of her desk.

" _Thanks for the good luck charm. I love you x"_ Beca texts, forty-five minutes before her exam is meant to start.

" _Love you too x"_ Chloe answers quickly, feeling herself relax in the knowledge that, somehow, she helped.


	12. Bechloe Week 2018 Day 7: Disney

**A/N: Day 7 of Bechloe Week 2018: Disney**

Back to where it all began. ft. excerpts from Seven Keys chapter 1 and 2.

* * *

It was almost inevitable that Beca and Chloe would end up at Disneyland for a day while they were in California over Christmas. Not anything to do with it being where they first saw each other, of course – just that it was Disneyland, and they both had reason to want to go at this point in time. For Chloe, it was a nice bookend to her time at university, given she'd last been here just before she started. For Beca… she just missed Disney, she used to have an annual pass and end up here at least monthly because she lived close by. Of course, there are no annual passes this time, and Beca grumbles a little at how expensive it is to buy a multi-park day ticket when she lines up to get them, Chloe standing across the pavement waiting for her.

Chloe looks around the wide area between the two parks, teeming with people even though it's a few days after Christmas. She hopes the lines aren't too bad inside, she didn't come to a theme park just to walk around (although she'll steer clear of the teacups, thanks. For one, it's a kids' ride, but mostly Fat Amy just totally ruined them for her last time and she doesn't want to think about that). Beca finally gets to the front of the queue and buys their tickets, soon stepping away from the counter and turning to walk back towards Chloe.

* * *

 _Chloe could hear Aubrey's snarky comment to Amy, but she was suddenly distracted, looking at someone across near the ticket window who looked impossibly familiar. Her concentration only snapped back to her friends when Aubrey jabbed her in the side, and she blinked a couple of times, looking back at her friends and then quickly towards the ticket window._

 _"Oh, sorry, I swear I saw-" Chloe stopped, shaking her head, "never mind. Where were we?"_

* * *

Chloe shook her head, trying to push away the sudden flashback as Beca arrived in front of her.

"What?" she asks, looking confused, but Chloe just shakes her head again.

"Nothing."

They enter Disneyland first, leaving California Adventure for later. There's better breakfast spots in the original park, and they'd decided they may as well have breakfast there if they were making a day of it.

Most of Main Street looks fairly homogenous, and Chloe can't quite remember if this is the same café that she saw Beca at four years ago, although it does have that same gazebo table in the front corner, and she shares a look with Beca when they are led to that very table and handed menus that makes her think that maybe, if they both recognise it, it might be the same place. Neither of them mention it out loud, however, instead falling into a conversation about their dismal atempt at trying to learn at least vaguely how to play Fortnite last night so they could try and talk to Will about it on his level, because they'd had a quick chat to him and Jake after their Christmas meeting and there was definitely a pop-cultural age gap becoming obvious.

They both order a coffee while they're still looking over the menu, but Beca orders an orange juice too. She'll swear she isn't pedantic, but she has a routine around breakfast and orange juice, and she tends to stick to it no matter what the context. Her juice arrives while they're ordering their food, and Beca starts twirling her glass around (carefully – it's full, and she's an adult) with one hand and tapping her fingers against the table with the other while Chloe orders.

* * *

 _The girls were chatting amicably, halfway through their meals when Chloe glanced up, doing a double take – okay, triple – at a small brunette sitting by herself at the table under the gazebo at the edge of the restaurant. She swore she recognised the girl, from one of her favourite, albeit largely unknown, bands, and they were kind of in LA…_

 _"Holy shit, is that Beca Mitchell? I thought I saw her earlier, but I wasn't sure, but that's totally Beca Mitchell" Chloe whisper-yelled, kicking Amy under the table when she went to turn around. "Don't fucking look! You're so obvious"_

 _"I'll be subtle!" Amy promised defensively, but shook her head and stayed facing Chloe, who was glaring at her. "Okay, angry ginger, calm down"_

 _"I can't tell if it's her or not, but I think it is?" Chloe continued, her mind running faster than she could keep up with. There was a slight chance that seeing Beca Mitchell in a music video for that one song from Seven Keys – Beca's band – that made them super famous for all of two months had been the moment Chloe realised how super gay she was, and-_

 _Aubrey's poke in her arm was enough to snap Chloe back to her friends. "Do you really want to be staring at her, Chloe?"_

 _"Yeah, go say hi! Ask if it is her!" Amy finished Aubrey's statement._

 _"No! Isn't that weird? You'll look like an idiot if you're wrong," Aubrey argued, and Chloe shrugged, glancing back up to maybe-Beca-Mitchell, who was tapping her fingernails on the table impatiently and sipping from a glass of orange juice._

 _"Maybe I'll work it out when she comes closer, she'd have to move closer to us to leave," Chloe points out, almost hopefully, ignoring Aubrey's raised eyebrow and going back to the food in front of her._

* * *

Chloe snaps out of her second flashback of the morning when her coffee arrives, glancing up at Beca to see she's looking at her curiously.

"What?" she asks, this time, but Beca just shakes her head.

* * *

 _The waitress recognised Beca (and so, she thought, did a redhead on a table slightly further into the café) and let her sit there for twenty minutes having only ordered a single orange juice before asking her if she was going to order anything._

 _"I'm sorry…" Beca started, trying to come up with a lie, "I was meant to meet my boyfriend here but he's got really caught up somewhere, he should be here in a minute, we'll order then."_

 _In truth, Jesse hadn't provided an excuse, he was just late. Beca sighed quietly to herself and spun the now two-thirds-empty glass of juice around on the table, glancing at all the people around her. Lots of families, as there always were at Disney – and the redhead. She was sitting with two blondes, one of them loudly rushing through sentences that Beca half-heartedly tried not to eavesdrop on, aided by the accent of the girl that she couldn't quick pick out. She almost wished redhead had gone on the recognition that seemed to flash across her face when Beca first sat down and came over to ask for a picture or something, at least so Beca could have something to distract her from this situation._

* * *

Beca snaps back to reality to see Chloe looking at her as curiously as she was looking at Chloe earlier, and she realises that – maybe – they're probably in the same position here. When she asks Chloe confirms with a shy nod.

"I still kind of wish I'd said hi to you then," Chloe admits, "but also I don't because it'd be… very different."

"I spent most of that breakfast being all, _oh they look like they're having fun I must want to be with them because Jesse is pissing me off_ , but that totally wasn't it and I might've freaked out if you'd said anything to me," Beca says in response.

"Yeah, that's why I'm kind of glad I didn't meet you properly until later on. I'm… very glad this happened."

"So am I. And I was questioning everything in my life around then, it's about when I decided to quit the band and break up with Jesse so maybe I would have been open to you confusing the hell out of my sexuality… but it still freaked me out a little in Toronto, and that was 18 months later."

"I think the fact that you didn't even recognise why you took notice of me means you probably weren't ready to realise anything," Chloe's words are cautious, but after a moment, Beca nods.

"We met at… almost the right time. Maybe Toronto was too much too soon, I don't know. But I guess we're here now. So it's fine," She changes tone partway through the sentence, her words sharper.

"We're here now," Chloe doesn't push her any further, knowing now isn't the time or place. It's just another thing to add to the slight worry playing at her mind about whether she's messed up after hearing that conversation between Beca and her mother the other day.

It's Disneyland, so of course, their tense moments across breakfast quickly give way as they talk over their meal and not long later they're back out in the park. They've both been here before, of course, but it's still fun. Beca rolls her eyes when Chloe squeals, seeing Minnie mouse taking position not far from the castle ("We didn't see Minnie last time, only Mickey!"), but doesn't fight Chloe's insistence at getting a photo together with Minnie.

She doesn't fight Chloe on anything for the whole day. She goes on the silly kids rides with her just because they have short lines, she lets Chloe buy them matching mouse ears that they'll never wear again, she reluctantly admits she has a huge thing for cotton candy and buys the biggest tub they have available. It's pure sugar, why wouldn't she like it? There's one place, though, that she won't buy into the 'magic of Disney'.

"Okay, I draw the line here," Beca pulls Chloe to a stop, her expression turning horrified as she looks at the sign indicating there's a thirty minute wait for It's A Small World, the creepiest and most boring attraction in the park.

"Oh, that? Same. No way I'm going on that, Aubrey dragged us to it last time," Chloe shakes her head, pulling Beca to start walking again, in another direction, Beca mildly surprised that it's not just her grouchy memories of that ride years ago that ruined it. It totally, actually, sucked. "We haven't done any proper roller coasters yet though, you up for that?"

"I, uh… may get a little scream-y on roller coasters? Like, I do them, but your ear drums might hate me," Beca admits, scowling when Chloe laughs in response.

"Badass Beca Mitchell is scared of roller coasters? That is…" Chloe trails off, eyeing Beca conspiratorially, "super predictable."

"What? Why?!"

"You get freaked out driving through the M1 tunnel in Sydney, and you freaked out on the plane over here…"

"Oh, shush," Beca grumbles, playing offended, although the light poke in the side Chloe gives her indicates her girlfriend knows she's bullshitting. She likes to have her feet on stable ground. It's totally a rational desire.

The first roller coasters Chloe drags them on in her new mission to make fun of Beca are not particularly intense – the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, the Matterhorn Bobsleds – and mostly they just grin at each other, leaning into the excitement of it all. They skip splash mountain – "I don't wanna queue for an hour just to get a bad photo and messed up hair" Chloe argues, Beca surprised at her insistence but shrugging and moving on – and in the mid-afternoon, move over to California Adventure.

"What about that one?" Chloe asks, a teasing lilt to her voice that Beca only understands when she glances in the direction she's pointing, at the biggest coaster, the star attraction of the park.

"Uh…." Beca trails off, wincing away a little.

"You would've been on it before, right? I did last time, I didn't mind it, but you've been here so many times?" Chloe pushes, Beca not making any move to respond. "Wait, you haven't?"

"I don't like being upside down," Beca's answer is shy, as she gestures at the loops in the middle of the coaster, the train running through at that moment as if scheduled to accentuate her point.

"Look, that's a valid concern," Chloe admits, indicating for Beca to follow her in an entirely different direction.

"Wait, you'll let me off that easy?" she asks, surprised.

"There's a difference between fun-scared and actually scared and I'm not going to push you into anything that'd be the latter," she explains, shrugging.

Beca doesn't feel the need to respond verbally, instead giving a thankful smile as they continue on to something a little less wild. It's Disney, after all – there's plenty of that.

And there's plenty of "Minnie & Minnie" rainbow shirts that Beca pretends she's not as excited about as Chloe when they find them in Downtown Disney after their dinner, until a stern look from her girlfriend forces her to let her guard down again and start shuffling through the rack for her size.

"I don't know why you pretend to not like Disney," Chloe states curiously as they sit at one of the Downtown Disney restaurants in the evening for dinner.

"I don't know either because I kind of love it," Beca admits, shaking her head as she goes back to flicking through a menu, feeling Chloe grinning at her.

"Now come on, work out what you're having, we don't want to miss the light parade."


End file.
